Restraint
by cinderadler
Summary: Most men would have run a mile, thrown away their shoes and continued running, but it appeared that John Watson was not most men. Most men weren't tied to a bed underneath the world's only consulting detective. Most men were missing out.
1. Milk and Water

The first time he tried it, he had never tasted anything like it.

As a man, so cultured and so well-versed in the world; one who could tell the age, country of origin, type of grape and even the shoe size of the presser of any wine you could think of and he did not know this taste. How peculiar, he thought, as he savoured the taste on his tongue. The hot, lavish slick feel caused avarice to prick at his skin and urged him to devour the moment with his whole mouth. Sherlock Holmes had never been one for greed, but _excess_? Excess suited him perfectly. Everything from his opulent charisma that caressed his very bones, as his skin did so elegantly, right down to the ground that adored his even weight and balanced statue of a body.

Temptation was the sweet wine of seduction and the sharp vinegar of regret; the siren with an angel's lips and a demon's tongue. Temptation was famed to taste of beauty and then spit your lust back in your face. Suddenly, Sherlock couldn't help but wonder; would John reciprocate his unbecoming lust? Temptation complied however, if only for a moment, before stilling him itself under the heat and deduction of the curious and fascinated detective.

"Sherlock?" John wondered aloud what that peculiar kiss was for.

"Yes, Doctor?" Sherlock asked flatly, a hint of intrigue played at his words, he was pleased with himself.

"What-what just happened?" The army doctor's skin began to warm under the contemplating breath of his flatmate. He could almost taste the excuse in the air; Sherlock's justification was almost tangible.

"I was curious," The detective began; half in complete control, half as naïve and as innocent as Sherlock could be. "John, I-"

"No-"

"It won't happen again."

"Don't apologise, Sherlock." John let a weak and unsure smile tug at the corners of his just-kissed mouth. The heady taste of Sherlock Holmes was heavy on his tongue as he swallowed consciously, but, without regret. Sherlock tasted like coffee and salt, almost like the scent of smoke curdled with the aroma of caramel to be more bitter than sweet, but John felt no urge to spit the taste away. "No apologies." John's statement was gentle, like he was letting Sherlock off easily because they were both confused by this matter and they couldn't think straight enough not to keep distorting each other's concentration.

"No promises." Sherlock whispered as he let John down from against the wall where his body had pinned his unsuspecting flatmate. John tasted like the sweet wine of seduction, just as Sherlock theorised he would.

John tore off to his right, headed towards the front door, as Sherlock darted to his right and up the stairs to the flat. John needed to shut himself out of 221B for an hour or two, Sherlock needed to lock himself into 221B forever. Neither looked the other in the eye as they paced to their separate escape routes. Their hands touched as they passed, as if they'd never touched at all.

* * *

'There's a first time for everything', John thought slowly, his nerves were lit up like erratic Christmas lights inside of him. 'Maybe it was the first time he's kissed anyone and I was just there, temptation or something, we all have urges I suppose,' John deliberated as he realised he didn't know where he was walking. 'Even Sherlock Holmes.'

"I bet it was for bloody science." John muttered almost scornfully at the bottle of milk in his hands. He could still taste the remnants of Sherlock's curiosity in his heated mouth; it was bittersweet now, like old wine and tea at once. He didn't quite know what to think but he was a doctor; and he knew that, medically, he was of sound mind although his residence with Sherlock may show to the contrary.

He was going to go home, to his flatmate, to 221B and not say a thing about their kiss.

* * *

Sherlock had just sat still, in his chair, with his knees tucked up to his chin and his arms wrapped around his legs to keep himself there. He was never out of spitting distance from his plaguing thoughts and curdling curiosity, Sherlock wasted his careful thoughts carelessly. Everything was spinning in his head, but not in the usual manner. It was as if his mind palace was being burgled of all of the sense and reasoning he had, so he was left with scattered sheets of innocent wonder, deep-seated fragility, tempestuous arrogance and a head full of secrets.

The only consulting detective in the world was more volatile than he'd anticipated at that moment in time, and John's absence was doing nothing to help, because his only constant of safety and certainty was gone. He had pushed him away, Sherlock deduced in anger. He alone had broken the doctor.

The detective stayed there and festered within his vast knowledge of everything but his heart. He waited to see if he was correct in his calculations, and for once in his life, Sherlock wished he was wrong.

* * *

"Sherlock, I'm back." John shouted from the kitchen as he walked into the living room. The television was on but no one was there. "I got milk; don't know if we needed any, we probably do." His volume lowered to just loud enough should he need to coax Sherlock from sleep, self-appreciating or self-loathing. The living room was devoid of human life and the TV only had static on it. "Sherlock?" John called out as he picked up the half-full mug of tea from the coffee table. "Sherlock, where are you?" He knew that Sherlock was still in the flat because his coat was nestled on John's chair. Sherlock shoes were in the room too, one on the floor and one next to John's laptop on the far side of the room, having obviously been thrown there. It was then that his worry began to calm itself, because when Sherlock let his temper take control he became predictable and almost boring. When Sherlock was swayed by his diluted rage, John could hold Sherlock quietly and calm him down.

The doctor breathed in deeply, inhaling the common, desirable scent of his flatmate and weighed up the possibilities as to where the elusive detective could be. Sherlock's bedroom; perhaps, but his coat just left there? John's bedroom; less likely, and the coat still wouldn't just be left there. The bathroom; more likely, and that would explain Sherlock's clothes strewn across the living room.

John couldn't hear any distinct breathing, which troubled him, so he went with his gut instinct and paced to the bathroom. The door was ajar before he nudged it open with his fingertips, but the key was in the lock on the inside of the door yet it hadn't been turned. There were expensive clothes angrily tossed into the far right corner of the room.

The army doctor's heart sank as he stepped further into the bathroom, trying to stop his eyes from falling upon the sight of Sherlock Holmes' figure in a bath full of water, not breathing. John tried to swallow back the rising panic from his throat but his heart was in the way. In a morose way, Sherlock looked truly serene and radiant beneath the water. John walked to beside the bath and stared at his flatmate for a split-second before he felt his hands tangle around Sherlock's in hurried aid. Sherlock was beautiful underwater, naked and still, John had never seen him so peaceful. The doctor's strong, war-worn fingers fought with the ugly rope tied around Sherlock's wrists as it suspended his arms above his head, where the rope hooked around the taps, submerging the detective completely.

"Sherlock, Shh-" John asked his flatmate in wavering earnest, feeling his hands shake against Sherlock's cool skin. "Sherlock!" He shouted without thought, plunging his left hand beneath the searing cold water to wrestle with Sherlock's body, sliding his right hand between the rope and the taps to ease the two apart. His movements were as violent they were brief, tugging Sherlock's limp, almost icy hands from around the taps. John let his grip on his flatmate's wrists drop and he jammed his arms, elbow deep, into the stinging water and around his flatmate. "Sherlock, please. Don't-please!" He nearly begged at the body, softly distraught.

Neither men were breathing as John's professional instincts urged him to slip his hands under Sherlock's neck and head, to pull Sherlock's flaccid body up from the weight of the emotionless water. John wrapped his rough hands around the detective's torso to yank him out of the water further. Teasing his eyelids apart quickly, pressing the heel of his frantic hands against Holmes' chest where his heart should be.

Sherlock's eyes flickered faintly as water spilt from his slack but sculpted mouth. His lips fell apart a little as he coughed slightly; inhaling suddenly like breathing was the only thing he knew. John tore his searching eyes away from their unfocussed glances at Sherlock's face, watching his hands fly up to touch Sherlock's lower lip, staring intently at Sherlock's twitching eyelids.

"Joh-" Sherlock gurgled. He spat water with an affluent grace that distracted John from his patient's needs. John heard him and didn't simultaneously. He was ignorant of the consequences for the first time in his life when he moved without a seconds thought. The doctor in him pushed their loose mouths together and breathed out. The lover within him cradled Sherlock's neck and breathed in as their tongues wrapped around each other's effortlessly.

It was heartfelt and hard, not gentle like they'd wanted, but John was desperate and Sherlock was nearly comatose. It wasn't perfect or romantic, but it was honest, and it was theirs.

* * *

Observing Sherlock breathe was like John was learning to breathe again himself, taking in every second greedily and without regret. The rise and fall of his pale chest under the tight sheets of John's bed settled John's heart to only simmer contently. The doctor's bedroom was quiet for all but breathing, as it had been for almost an hour, until John's low words hung in the near-silence.

"Sherlock?" John was subtle; he didn't want to wake Sherlock if he was asleep.

"Yes, John?" Sherlock croaked. His words were discreet though, he hadn't spoken in a while.

"You had rope around your wrists," The concerned doctor started, softly as ever.

"Yes." The detective was clipped in his words, like John's statement wasn't a problem. His lean body turned over beneath old sheets to face John when he spoke.

"_Why_?" His words fell silent as their eyes crossed paths in the darkness of the ill-lit room.

"I was at peace." He stated matter-of-factly, retaining the quiet resonance they held as they were washed with conscious nonchalance.

"Sherlock,"

"Don't, John," Sherlock ordered softly, he didn't want to fight right now. He was at war with himself enough, he didn't want to be at war with his only friend in the world too.

"No," John's protest was defiant but tender.

"Don't, please-" The detective's tone was relenting but sharp.

"You tied your wrists above your head and drowned yourself." It sounded so harsh when John mapped it out loud. The air grew tense between them. "That is not peace."

"I don't see how my peace is any of your business, John." Bitterness echoed in Sherlock's unfelt and hollow words. Their conversation was heading down a long, dark, winding road that neither wanted dearly to go down.

"It is completely my business; you arrogant, self-centred sod." John's words weren't hurtful; they just defended his honest heart. "You could have died, Sherlock. You could have died." The temperate room became their tomb once more.

Nothing was uttered for minutes. The air was heavy all of a sudden as the sound of bunching sheets played against the subtle noise of John's feet padding towards the bed.

"I'm plagued by demons, John. Demons that won't let me sleep." Sherlock whispered into the comforting darkness. He wasn't sorrowful; his stony tone wouldn't let him weaken into anything other than superiority. The detective made it sound as if he was privileged to be in such a Hell; like it was his own special prize and his reward for such intelligence. A warm hand around his aching wrist jerked him from his encompassing self-loathing at his sickening honesty. Why was he so weak that he would pour his mind into John's awaiting palms?

"Demons that wrap around your wrists and pull you under the water, Sherlock?" John's question didn't ask for an answer. "That's not peace; not yours, not mine, not by anyone's reasoning." His hand rested on Sherlock's wrists as he lay beside his flatmate, facing him straight on. Sherlock froze at their proximity, not moving a muscle as John soaked in his barely-visible, shadowed image.

The doctor inched his head closer to the detective's as Sherlock shut his eyes tightly, hiding inside his wild mind. Breathing surely against his porcelain, angled face, John looked deeply into Sherlock's closed eyes, letting his lips fall open loosely. He ran two fingers from Sherlock's temple down his jaw and to his neck. John pressed his words gently against Sherlock's firm lips.

"You're a liar, Sherlock, Holmes, and you know it."


	2. What's a Castle Without Its King?

He could look but he couldn't see, no matter how hard he tried.

Glancing up from the cold cup of tea was agonising because Sherlock wasn't there to look at. There was no imposing genius to block out the sun. John had only bruises and love bites for memories, and they would fade all too fast.

John didn't believe he had ever known love, but knew he had come very close with Sherlock Holmes. Everything acted as a comforting lie without him, John's entire life was just damage control.

Nothing was as real as the hot mouth that would press against his neck heavily and sink its teeth into his rich, sweet skin with a tender but controlled bite. Nothing anymore could match the indulgent, torn moan that spilled from that mouth as it applied its pressure and sucked back against it, freeing the breathy, choked moan from John's throat. John couldn't dig his needing fingers into warm porcelain skin as midnight curls and tangles licked his hands. He couldn't bite into a terse, swollen mouth to make it bleed. He couldn't feel the weight of a strong, slim hand on the base of his back as he groaned gracelessly into his sheets, panting with his teeth sunken into his lower lip.

He just couldn't feel anymore.

* * *

Three days had passed with scarcely a word between both men. They had learned to live with themselves without burning the flat down but the doctor and the detective barely lived with each other without setting light to half of London. They were cataclysmic and infinite in their denial, so beautiful in their resistance, and every touch set their skin alight.

"Tea?" John broke the silence once, after the second day of tense breathing asphyxiated the flat.

"No." Sherlock replied a day after John had asked the question. His eyes had settled into grey-green fires by then. Sherlock's hands stayed firmly steepled against his chin for hours as he lost himself inside his mind, away from John.

* * *

John theorised that in a world full of questions, Sherlock Holmes was the only answer; and in a world full of solutions, he was the only problem. Sherlock remained John's final problem, even when he was gone, and he **was** gone.

What had happened on a dark, winter's evening strangled John when he spoke, sunk into his skin in his sleep and wouldn't wash off in the shower. Sherlock Holmes had left him. He had disappeared like a magician. In abandoning John like only a madman could, he had gained nothing, but only a man as mad as Sherlock Holmes had such little sense to stop himself from doing something so reckless and foolish. Only a man as mad as he was would do everything in his power to cause the very problem that would inevitably destroy him.

And it was poetic justice really; for all the teasing and forced denial, for everything John had brought out in Sherlock. John had exposed him to the world and the world had hurt the great detective. It was no surprise to wake and find that fantastic, fascinating man had fled. It only ached now.

John spent hours remembering because memories lasted longer than pitiful reflections of healed bruises in the mirror and rope around his wrists in the bath.

One kiss was deeper than the rest. He recalled it with fondness whenever he entertained the unforgiving lurch in his guts that came about when he was alone at night or alone in public.

The fracturing doctor and his self-medicating bondage: the ideal of what lay in the wreckage of Sherlock's smashed castle.

Everything about it was needy and desperate. It was anxious and brilliantly so, nothing was fabricated and nothing was a lie. They willed their denial to the back of each other's throats, pulling each opposing body closer without sense or calculated feeling. Nothing would ever be as real as that again. The choke that rose in John's throat stemmed his breathing with a promise that nothing would bring back the man that made real life more than just life.

* * *

"John, you're wrong." Sherlock muttered the day after he refused tea. The predictably self-righteous statement felt a little empty to the doctor's ears.

"Am I, Sherlock?" John enquired politely, his cordial expression countered Sherlock's unforgiving pseudo-smile.

"Yes, you are." The world's only consulting detective leapt from his chair and paced around the kitchen, walking out his accumulated tension and energy. "You, and your instincts to save another's life over your own, with your old, abused hands tending to your aching heart. You, in your boring world of lying Valentines and dishonest lovers-you are wrong, John." Sherlock's excited grin edged at nervousness as he bounced around the living room with undisguised happiness, but it was like he was apologising for what he was about to explain. "And after observing you and I over the past few days, I am fairly sure-no-I'm certain that danger is your only love. It's the thrill of the chase, that we don't want boring, **we** don't want normal; you want the chase and I want the catch, and to be caught by a predator like I-I-" He paused, flicking his eyes up to par with John's through his lashes. "You are not like them. You never could be." There was a calm assertion behind Sherlock's staccato speech. "John Hamish Watson, you are wrong." Sherlock halted his steps and pressed his mouth firmly to John's. John could feel the honest smile on Sherlock's face.

The detective's breathing was heavy when he pulled away from the doctor, there was awe in his eyes as he analysed the expression of the man he had just kissed. John appeared shocked for all of a second before he leant up and pulled the detective on top of him. Their open mouths caught in a sticky kiss as their hands tangled in each other's hair deliberately, each pulling the other hard into the moment.

Sherlock moved one hand from his flatmate's roots to slide behind his neck and tease at John's striped jumper. John pushed his weight forwards out of his chair, and walked Sherlock back into the sofa. He straddled Sherlock with powerful thighs as he pushed him down. The kiss became rough and relentless, enough to coax a moan from both if they'd tried. Deft, violinist fingers tugged at John's jumper, fighting it over his head.

John pressed his body forward further, hurriedly undoing the buttons on Sherlock's tight shirt to slip his hands beneath the soft fabric and touch the detective's pale, flawless skin. Both men's breathing was making them lightheaded. Sherlock bit John's lower lip hard before trailing loose, sloppy kisses down his neck, nipping at his pulse with sharp breaths and choked moans.

The doctor's fast hands pushed off the detective's shirt with fervour. He ran his eager hands along the plains of Sherlock's chest, his angular shoulder blades and his ungodly collar bones. One hand worked up to twist into the darker hair at the base of Sherlock's neck as the other pressed forcefully into the detective's back.

Sherlock continued to suck at John's throat, rolling his tongue slowly over the supple skin between his teeth. His left hand snaked under his flatmate's shirt and tugged possessively at John's right nipple, pinching it as he caught the doctor's mouth in a hot, sated kiss.

John's chest heaved as a low groan rose in his throat under Sherlock's ministrations. He pushed his hips into the detective's and swallowed his thick moan with gratification.

The detective pulled harder with his teeth before easing off, gazing into John's eyes like he was lost. John lifted a finger to Sherlock's parted lips to stop the words he was about to fumble over. The man of a thousand words was speechless. Their world's melded together slowly. The flat became filled of tension, heavy breathing, lost words and hot skin. John didn't ask for permission when he leant his head down, he simply blinked and felt his way sensuously to Sherlock's wrists, letting the detective still himself and deny him if he wanted.

Dipping his head lower, the doctor's hot breath reverberated over his flatmate's scar-free skin. He placed his lips flush onto Sherlock's throat and left a simple, chaste kiss where he knew the pulse of the world's only consulting detective would be.

Pacing himself, John drew back and breathed out subtly. He rearranged Sherlock's hands into his own, giving John complete control of the almost-lust that consumed them both. The faintest hint of a wicked grin flashed over the doctor's lips as he ran his tongue across Sherlock's collar bone as delicately as he could. The dark-haired detective growled into the doctor's sandy hair, letting his eyes close for a moment.

The mere sight of the most powerful man he knew nearly quivering beneath him had John on the edge. He was too wrapped up in the moment to consider anything of the real world, of the open door and the idea that anyone could walk in and see them at any moment. '_It's the thrill of the chase, that we don't want boring, we don't want normal._'

Sherlock maintained his composure to the best of his ability, saying nothing and stifling the growing moan in his throat. He slammed his teeth into his lower lip and closed his eyes decisively. He couldn't collect his thoughts cohesively. He needed control and, even without his hands, Sherlock would take his control back.

Sherlock manoeuvred his head to lick up the side of John's neck with a loose, heady smile as John licked Sherlock's left collarbone. The detective's mouth was ceaseless and passionate, sucking and biting at John's skin with a need more than a want. Lust had poisoned Sherlock Holmes.

He slung his weight forwards, leaning John back as he held Sherlock's wrists tightly behind them both. He moved his tenacious lips over John's shirt with ease. Sherlock swallowed as he searched for John's approval through his long eyelashes, closing his heart-shaped mouth around John's right nipple as he found it. The blush coloured John's cheeks like oil in water; Sherlock was fascinated at the chemical reaction of his work and bit down gently in appreciation.

The raven- haired man loosened John's iron grip on his wrists before guiding the doctor's finger to his swollen lips. Sherlock replaced his wrists as they were in an attempt at playing fair. John restrained his touch further, holding tighter onto Sherlock's wrists when he circled John's fingertip with his hot, wet tongue.

Their eyes held each other's for a brief moment, burning the other up with unrequited desire smothered by translucent denial.

Sherlock sucked lightly at John's finger until the moment was lost. John was panting delicately against Sherlock's ear. He bucked his hips into John's, eliciting a bitten cry from the open-mouthed doctor, now both hard under the restraint and control they had over the other. Leaving nothing to chance, he released John's finger from his lips. Sherlock pressed a hard, sticky kiss to John's collar and then his throat; sucking at his pulse as his did so, letting John's panted breathing ring in his ears.

"Shhe-" John brought Sherlock's head around as he fit their mouths together with a slick domination, kissing the detective deeply. A moan caught in Sherlock's throat as it did John's.

Their hips slid against each other's, unable to touch through layers of fabric. Everything in Sherlock's mind became a sudden blur of sharp, pressurised light and the heightened sound of John coming. The doctor broke beneath the world's only consulting detective. The black-haired man almost choked as John bit his lower lip and flicked it with his tongue languidly, making him come hard against the subtle caress of John's tongue and his fierce grip on Sherlock's strained wrists.

They kissed slowly as they lost themselves in their new universe of just the doctor and the detective forever.

* * *

John's cries fell onto satin and skin, just as they had always done, without Sherlock beside him.


	3. Taping Up Cuts

"Not everything is about restraint, Sherlock!" John seethed without remorse, staring his flatmate and lover straight in the eyes .

"I can't imagine anything that would not require my restraint, John, particularly you." Sherlock uttered histrionically but not in reply. He threw his tense hands from his raucous black curls, splaying his palms to John in apology. It always seemed, to John, that Sherlock was talking to himself.

"Of course you don't!" John bit his lips together as he turned around, he couldn't face Sherlock. "You complete bastard. You are a beautiful man with a brilliant mind," He wrung his hands in his jumper "you caught me. And look what you've done. You _can't_ accept me as your equal. I am not a man to you, am I? I'm just some stupid animal, caught in your trap, like a spider and a fly, Sherlock. So, don't. Don't you _dare_ tell me I require your restraint because I don't." John spun around on his heels and reached for Sherlock's body with accusing fingers. He grasped Sherlock's suit tightly with wrought fingers just as Sherlock's stern hands flew up and manacled John's wrists in protest. "Oh, that's right, isn't it, Sherlock? Just hold me back as tight as you can, _**restrain me from you**_. Prove yourself, _detective_. Be amazing! Be that beautiful, innocent man I fell in love with, who kissed me all of a sudden one morning and has hated himself ever since. Go on, be that!-**Be. Everything. For. Me. Sherlock.**" John's tone was similar to heartbreak and rage simultaneously. His eyes stung and he swallowed back the tears. He couldn't cry in front of Sherlock Holmes. He had broken beneath him so many times that to break again would make no difference, but this instance was not John breaking by himself or the good doctor being broken, this was John falling apart.

It was never pain that made the doctor cry, but the inability to feel at all. He cried for Sherlock most nights.

* * *

John still felt trapped by all the red tape he'd wrapped around what they had. All their restrictions and restraints cordoned their affection off from the naked eye.

John had tried to kiss Sherlock in public once, only a small, adolescent kiss because he could. It was a kiss to tell the world on the only terms he knew that he and Sherlock had found their common ground with each other, and it wasn't murder or hurt for a change. He had tried but Sherlock just blinked at him in shock and drawn back. Sherlock had tried to hold John's waist in return as he'd left John examining his eyes for answers. He had rested his hand on the detective's for a second as they walked. John had taken care to knot their fingers together as he moved their hands apart, leaning up to whisper in Sherlock's ear as he did so, unknotting their fingers loosely.

"I know you don't want to do that." John was polite and gentle, being meaningful as far as he could mean it. Sherlock was a troubled soul and, as blunt as he was, he needed to be let down softly.

"John, I do!" He was almost surprised at the hushed tones in the doctor's voice. John always seemed to be the one apologising.

"No, Sherlock, I understand." John was as definite as he was caring when he played Sherlock's emotions down for public exposure. The doctor slid his hand into the detective's without a word.

* * *

In his head, John had done this a thousand times without regret. He had kissed Sherlock a hundred times; because, in his head, nothing mattered. In reality, John was sitting in his chair again, unaware if he had even moved in the past two weeks or if he had been stationary in his sorrow for all that time. He slid his left hand into his right without looking and pretended it was Sherlock's hand he was holding. He stared as hard he could into the sun to bleach himself of two torturous weeks of trying to solve an unsolvable man. He imagined he was holding Sherlock's hand until he closed his eyes to the sun.

John felt unclean at the sudden realisation at the manifestation of his mind in his hands and needed to run a bath. He stood up slowly and carried his own length of rope to the bathroom.

The water fell thick, fast and scalding hot against John's tired body. It provided enough pain to keep him from sinking his head beneath the surface immediately, just for peace and quiet from his mind. John truly knew how Sherlock felt every day now, and he didn't like it one bit. The ache of the world tugging at John's flesh had alleviated as the days dragged on, but it was still by no means painless.

The first week was the worst. The heartache and confusion had lessened now but the lost doctor was left with the things he'd never said and everything he did say, and was still without Sherlock there as a consequence.

He was without his self-certified chemist to ease the pain.

221B and the shell of a man within wanted nothing more than to hurt right now, because Sherlock would be there to hurt him with his jagged adoration. Sherlock would make him feel, at least. John wanted dearly to feel something, _to_ _feel anything_, rather than nothing.

John's steady hands were used to war and shaking without his conflicted detective to soothe him. He tied the emotionless knot with precision as a sign of the internal war he was tiringly fighting. One ankle bound neatly against the other, they didn't make any noise or complaint but they didn't thank him for it either.

When he hooked the binds over the taps, John breathed in the loneliness, noting that every time he had done this in the last two weeks it felt less and less like Sherlock each time.

* * *

He couldn't clear his mind just like Sherlock could never completely do. They weren't the same; sometimes they weren't even similar, but John and Sherlock were attracting opposites, doomed to circle the other's earth for eternity. They would be each other's sun until the end of their time.

Everything seemed false of late. Life seemed to be a playing one big trick on the suspecting doctor; as if his pain and personal torture were the greatest practical jokes the world had ever seen. In truth, Sherlock was feeling just the same, _exactly the same in fact_, but John could never know; because Sherlock Holmes was strong and brave, intelligent and restrained, a liar and alone.

Neither man wanted this, but Sherlock had acted by his own rules and John had reacted to restore the balance, and now the doctor and the detective broke in their own separate ways.

Sherlock stayed still, miles away, with his head in a sink in the back of a bar. He tried his hardest not to breathe, but John's soft smile clicked back in his mind and he choked awake, coughing out the harsh water he'd frantically breathed in.

The doctor stared ahead serenely when he deftly secured the blindfold over his eyes. As John lay still in the bath; he didn't want boring, he didn't want normal, he wanted Sherlock back and this was the only way he knew how to get him.

* * *

Two days before everything had fractured, Sherlock fed John strawberries and chocolate when he'd handcuffed him to the detective's bed. Sherlock licked a drop of chocolate from the corner of John's mouth when he pressed a tender kiss to the doctor's soft lips, followed by a harder, more controlling osculation. Sherlock made love to John, dominant and beautiful, and delayed his orgasm to resist his inner-demons their wishes. His strong hands caressed John's sticky skin, teasing at John's muscles in an attempt at taming his vicarious emotions. Sherlock gave in to John against his greater limitations, collapsing on top of the powerful doctor when he did.

The night before they cracked, they argued. John strapped Sherlock's arms and legs to a chair in the kitchen. He kissed Sherlock indulgently as he doubled the red tape around the dark brunette's slight wrists and sculpted ankles. John tied the blindfold tight enough, looser than a bandage but tighter than a sling, before he trailed indiscernible open-mouthed kisses down Sherlock's body. He pressed a long, hard, thirsting kiss on the inside of Sherlock's thigh. John made love to Sherlock that night, biting gently at his wrists as he did so, denying Sherlock or himself nothing. John was strong but, for Sherlock, he was weak.

They argued later that night before crawling into Sherlock's bed together in apology, a frail attempt at fixing things.

The day after that, Sherlock cornered John in the kitchen and tried to explain himself. The perplexing detective poured the contents of his half-full heart into John's tea cup.

"John, please, let me tell you why." Sherlock urged abruptly. John noted that he was trying to be soft.

"Why? Sherlock, why what? Why the acid and blood corrupted each other?" John answered by testing the water with facts from a case they had been working on recently.

"No, John, don't pretend you're stupid. You know what I mean." Sherlock wasn't pressing. Ironically he was like a cross parent, even though he was the worst for relapsing into petulant bouts. "Allow me to explain my need for self-restraint." Sherlock interposed into the stagnant air between them.

"Sherlock, I'm not an experiment," John began. He stood his ground but favoured ignorance because, deep down, he knew where their altercation would lead. He was right, for once.

"I didn't say that-" Sherlock argued and John was forced to retort.

"I'm not your pet science project, please," He breathed out resignedly. "I understand that you have your 'demons' and that you need to keep in control of me to control them, sure, fine, I get it. Honestly, I'll learn to live with that. I know you need to be king of your castle, else the empire will crumble, I _understand_, I do. And I mean it, Sherlock, when I tell you to stop this right now, because I know where this is going, so _please_." John almost pled as he set his tea down on the counter, he didn't want to use his hands but he would if he had to.

"John."

"Please, Sherlock. I'm only human, and as much as you don't want to be, you are too."

"Kiss me." Sherlock declared without question, as if he had ignored everything John had said. That was the first time Sherlock had asked John to kiss him. It was the first time John had ever been able to stop thinking and have clarity in the honesty and aggression of their attraction. "**Let me kiss you without control. Let me show you me without restraint.**"

Sherlock didn't wait for a response before he slammed his mouth into John's. He pressed their bodies hard together against the countertop, digging his fierce hands into John's desert-storm roots. John moaned automatically at a pressure he'd never felt Sherlock use before. He chased his hands to frame Sherlock's cut-glass face and slid his fingers around the back of Sherlock's neck.

The heavily-breathing detective bridged his mouth wider to deepen the angry, unrelenting kiss. He bit his sharp teeth into John's lower lip and pulled it messily into his mouth with a moan. John felt himself slip beneath Sherlock's weight. His body was tense beneath the detective's. Violinist fingers clawed into John's back with passion.

Sherlock panted into John's mouth when he released his lip, it was bleeding slightly. Sherlock sucked the wound to ease John's pain. John's senses stung with stimuli at Sherlock's almost animalistic approach to this kiss, it was unlike anything John had ever experienced.

John relished the taste of anger on his tongue when Sherlock gripped his wrists, having moved them from his scarred back. The detective groaned deeply into John's mouth under the heavy kiss. John's breathing hitched when Sherlock clasped his fingers around John's wrists as he bit the bleeding on his lip simultaneously, jerking Sherlock out of his lustful daze with guilty eyes.

The immediately repentant detective dropped John's hands like they'd burnt him. His eyes drowned themselves like he had his body in the bath a month ago. He pulled away from his doctor unsteadily.

"I-I'm so sorry." He choked. Sherlock Holmes had never apologised in his life and John should have felt privileged to have been the first to hear it, but John couldn't hear anything over the pounding in his ears. John's eyes stung like his mouth as he saw through the cracking mirror into the ruined wonderland of Sherlock Holmes' soul. Sherlock didn't see a thing for the ugly bruises he'd made on his doctor's exquisite wrists. He was transfixed with the contusions his unrestrained fingers had marred John's light skin with.

This time John didn't apologise. He completely understood but he did not apologise. 'Violence begets violence' Sherlock had told him once; the man that had taught John more than he could ever learn, and suddenly, that was all he could remember.

John didn't break his gaze from Sherlock's eyes as they met with his, nor did he break his concentration when he punched Sherlock in the mouth.

* * *

Sherlock knew that his self-control was hurting John and he knew John would be better off without him. He was hell enough for himself and John had stuck by him through everything, Sherlock didn't want to be the tempest to John's calm island of a heart. Instead, he cried silently in his solemn room at night because of what he was doing to John.

The night that Sherlock and John held each other all night was one that Sherlock couldn't quite wash himself clean of. They were quiet and simple in their adoration of the other that night as they were every night, treasuring the other man like he was pure gold. Soft hands had held on tightly to what they had. John fell asleep against the encompassing warmth of the detective's long, slim body. He breathed in his sleep to the rhythm of the quiet, almost inaudible song that Sherlock sung to him.

'_Don't you leave me to sleep alone. _

_I'll break your heart but not your bones. _

_Love, I know, I hurt you so. _

_Hold me close until I go. _

_I'll leave you my heart in my violin. _

_And lock the door so I can't get in. _

_Sleep sweet, my love, breathe for me._

_We'll kiss like we never learnt to feel._'

The torn, half-spoken words fell onto light breathing as Sherlock clutched John's fingers tighter into his own. The detective closed his eyes and wrapped himself around his doctor with all he had. For the first time in weeks, he tried to sleep. The world's only consulting detective held back as little as he could for John that night because that was all he could give to his noble, loyal, lion-hearted doctor. Both men were honest lovers and true friends.

Sherlock had no heart to speak of to give to John, but he gave what he could and let John collect the pieces with the knowledge that he would fix him someday. He gave John all the pieces to complete the greatest puzzle of all.

* * *

Sherlock left after he and John had argued, but he didn't leave like a boy, he left like a man. He left John on a broken promise and heartache. For the first time in weeks, John went to bed alone and felt cold for the long hour before he shut his eyes. Sherlock went to bed just as alone but hours after John did. The raven-haired detective with the harmful mind stood staring in the bathroom mirror for hour after hour. He glared at his hands and his mouth; one was full with swollen proof, the other was limp and empty.

He was silent for all that time, not having any conscious string of thought enough to say anything to himself or to wake John and apologise. But how could he apologise for being a beast of a man?

Sherlock had remained as passive as he could in love until he had met John. As a result, he had come to the slow-dawning realisation, over the last few weeks of their 'relationship', that he was the poison in John's veins. So Sherlock tore his faint heart out of his chest and swallowed it down with all of its disease, all of his restraint and all of his secrets. He walked in a quiet daze to John's bedroom.

The door to John's room was ajar but he hadn't noticed. The world's only consulting detective was losing his touch. Sherlock padded to John's bedside in the shrouding darkness, to kneel beside the bed and face his lover and flatmate, glancing adoringly at John's composure in sleep. John was so calm and unhurt when he was sleeping, _Sherlock couldn't hurt him there_.

Counting the notes of John's gentle, rhythmic breathing, Sherlock crouched on the floor and leant his head into John's until they were only a few centimetres apart. He looked longingly into John's closed eyes, searching for forgiveness for his thoughtless violence in the blackest winter night anyone could wish to imagine.

He placed a delicate, slow kiss to John's lips. _That should have been our first kiss_, Sherlock regretted sensitively, as he pushed a little harder into John's lax, sleep-consumed mouth before tearing himself away like a shadow at the metallic taste of the wound he'd inflicted. Everything about that kiss was an apology that Sherlock could never bring himself to speak. He whispered with a definite kind of sorrow into John's ear before he fled quietly out of John's room and out of 221B Baker Street.

"I'm a liar John Watson, and you know it."


	4. Are We Not Men?

The good doctor and the great detective were in love deeper than any ocean. **Were**. They had begun to repair each other by means of restraint, tea, promises, threats, bondage and limited romance. They were the most beautiful couple you could ever hope to meet. They were so subtle in their affection and adoration but so strong in their acceptance of the new normal that they were creating. Both men were so blindingly in love, and yet, so lovingly blind to let what built them up break them back down.

They would never let anyone see it, their restraint was so perfect, but the men of 221B were in love. Sherlock and John **were** in love.

_Just look at them now_.

* * *

The law of averages dictated that they should never meet again.

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson would be polar opposites until the end of time, cold and lonely and always unable to touch.

John was well on his way to obliteration. He kept his head under the water longer and longer each time. There would come a time when he would stay underneath the water too long. And he knew it.

Sherlock began dismantling himself the second he walked out of the flat at 3 o'clock in the morning. He had fled like a ghost, like John's shadow, making both of them less noticeable by the day. It had only been two weeks, coming up to three, and both men were destroying themselves at a remarkable pace.

No amount of sex, drugs or violence could fix them, but it was never as though the sex fixed them in the first place.

John was no longer Sherlock's daily medication and Sherlock was no longer John's release for anger.

Both men digressed over the course of those personally cataclysmic two weeks into harrowing reflections of the men they were before they had met each other. Sherlock had more drugs in him than a medicine cabinet and John painted the world as his target.

The doctor and the detective were a broken watch in the hands of an unskilled layman. They had all the pieces and all the knowledge but they just couldn't be fit together to keep time.

The only sounds you could ever hear in 221B Baker Street anymore were made by pain and running water.

* * *

It had been three weeks and two days in total since Sherlock had left John, without a word, in the middle of the night. Three weeks and two days to let their worlds slowly crumble down around them, to let in the harsh light of loneliness and the swallowing temptation to stop breathing. Three weeks and two days of heartbreak in motion for Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

Almost a month of guilt and sorrow wrapped around both the doctor and the detective, like the sheets of Sherlock's bed for John and John's sheets for Sherlock, growing tighter and tighter by the hour.

John had gotten worse and Sherlock had gotten no better. They had eroded each other's sanity when together and were destroying each other now they were apart. Both the doctor and the detective hunted for the slow- scorching sensation that crawled across their skin at the same time most days. It was the feeling that came when they knew someone was looking at them, and that person knew they were alone and didn't even wonder why.

Sherlock and John were London's best kept secret, but everyone knew. Anyone with any sense could see there was something between them. Everybody simply judged John for accepting Sherlock into his life as more than background noise. They accused Sherlock with their unceasing eyes for taking one of their own. It was corruption to most folk; the audacity of Sherlock to ruin a humble doctor with his poisonous tongue.

Hatred for the world's only consulting detective festered every day, until living was simply sport for Sherlock. _'Always trying to be the best at everything, forever the better man.'_ When, in truth, Sherlock Holmes had only ever tried to be the better man once. He left John to be the _better_ man. All he could be now was a good man.

John had once told Sherlock, one morning over tea, that all the good men were lonely. "That's why, you and I, we're not alone. We're not good men. Never will be." He joked, but the words cut Sherlock like broken glass as he remembered them.

Their 'love' for each other could only be described as an equation of fire. They were the fuel, the flames and the oxygen, but Sherlock had got this calculation wrong. He had misjudged John's capacity to burn.

By removing himself as oxygen; he simply stopped John from breathing. By subtracting himself as fuel; John continued to burn up his own oxygen as the flames would die until there would be nothing left to breathe. By deducting himself as the flames; John would play with matches until he burned again.

John was burning the heart out of Sherlock, with or without the restraints of his detective.

John Watson's capacity for self-destruction was much greater than Sherlock had anticipated.

"I should have seen the signs." Sherlock scolded himself with another third of absinthe and the three types of painkillers.

The psychosomatic limp was an obvious display of the subconscious compulsion to damage himself when he wasn't damaged. It displayed that Johns mind felt he should show the world that he was damaged as proof of his career and the horrors he'd seen. He did it to prove that he was alive. John's lack of commitment in several relationships, to anyone but Sherlock indicated that he was loose with his morals and didn't care much for anything other than sex. To Sherlock, however, to someone who knew him better than anyone else on the Earth; it showed that John's mind wouldn't allow him to have anything unbroken. How John would be seen with Sherlock in public and not care was a sign of destruction enough.

Sherlock had always wondered why John was unaffected by the stares and whispers thrown at them in the street. For the sake of his own personal destruction, to have been seen to live in and love the company of London's most notoriously broken man would class him as equally as broken.

John had committed social suicide in the form of the affection of Sherlock Holmes.

The sand-haired, ex-army doctor had his fair share of demons, something Sherlock discovered as he sat in the alley behind St Bart's with his knees tucked up to his chest.

Doctor John Hamish Watson had outsmarted the world's only consulting detective by hiding a secret right under his nose, in his arms, around his wrists and in his heart. John knew to hide it in the safest place he could think of and Sherlock's famed heart was the safest place from Sherlock's head that he knew.

* * *

Sherlock's supposed heart sank in his chest every time he caught a glance of a dark-blonde man in the street. None of them ever were John but he hoped each time that it was. He could apologise from a distance and rid his heart of this guilt which still hung over his head like a tarnished halo.

He had finally found a castle where he would always wear a crown, and Sherlock Holmes wore his crown of thorns every day. He could always be King of his world. He could command his symphony unfettered by distraction now. He would play a lonely lament of a grey life without John.

Nothing could catch the light like John's hair did, Sherlock mused, and now nothing in his world was gold, silver or even bronze in any light. Nothing was worth anything without John Watson. John was the only weight in Sherlock's self-absorbing world, he was the only currency, and without his doctor and blogger Sherlock was a broke and broken man.

Ever since he had left, life had become even more than tedious. Sherlock clawed at his skin as he did at the sun because everything seemed uglier than usual in the past week. Life was blurring to a standstill in Sherlock's mind. Everything was contused and bleeding together, life was fragmenting and then being put back as it was in split seconds. Normal was gone, not as though it was ever there, but Sherlock didn't like this particular strain of abnormal.

It didn't comb through his hair with idle fingers when he was sleeping or thinking. It didn't whisper bitten promises into his ear at crime scenes, it didn't try to kiss him in the street and it wasn't rejected like Sherlock's old abnormal was. The new abnormal didn't tie his wrists above his head when they made love. It didn't kiss him deeply against the wall of the hallway, it didn't make him tea and it didn't pull him desperately out of the bath to save the brilliant detective from himself.

Sherlock's head was heavy from his crown, and he didn't want to be a King any more. The man of a thousand words wanted to give them all to John Watson.

Sherlock Holmes was the most hated man he knew of. All of London practically despised him, but he didn't mind. None of that bothered him. He didn't like himself at the best of times and tore himself apart at the worst, but there was one man who didn't hate him. That man was the only person who mattered to Sherlock.

The world's only consulting detective wondered, from the back of the bar four streets away from 221B Baker Street, if his good doctor hated him now. Sherlock pained himself to think about John and not be able to see him. He could taste him after swallowing the rest of a bottle of sleeping tablets.

Sherlock **still** couldn't sleep.

* * *

John tied his ankles, knees and wrists together and pulled himself into the foetal position. He had this done for three nights in a row to stop himself from thrashing out in the night at the body of a man who was not nestled quietly behind him.

The ex-army doctor pondered the thought that Sherlock hated him as much as John hated himself. John hadn't tried to look for Sherlock even once. He knew it would be impossible to even attempt to search. His elusive, lightly-stepped tracks would be like following a shadow into an ill-lit room.

John bit his lip to keep himself from screaming. Everything needed to hurt like he was hurting. It wasn't fair to John that no one else was affected by Sherlock leaving.

His tea would go cold for days when he looked out of the window, out onto Baker Street, just as Sherlock used to do. John had taken to wearing Sherlock's dressing gown. He'd left it behind and it still smelled of the fascinating and absent consulting detective.

John needed to get out of the flat, he decided, before he tied himself up again to feel like Sherlock was near. He knew that, one time, he would go too far. He would be the body that Sherlock would investigate, perhaps with blurry eyes. John would be the next case one day. He would be the newest body on the slab.

John needed air that didn't taste of stale regret and his flatmate, and he had run out of milk a week ago.

* * *

Sherlock left the bar again at two in the morning and walked the darkest streets he could find, to clear his mind. He needed the drug-induced, drunken stupor to fill his world. The haze would calm his melancholy heart.

* * *

John left the flat in Sherlock's coat.

* * *

The streets around 221B provided no solace for Sherlock's stinging head and weary eyes. He needed the clutter of the surrounding London life to hide his face because he couldn't face the world as he was. Every time he saw a flicker of sandy-blonde flash by his sight, he would ache with the hope that it was John.

Sherlock needed more sleeping tablets. With what he had in his wallet, and the little self-loathing he had left, Sherlock stumbled his way to a shop to buy himself some peace and quiet from his ravenous thoughts.

John's outlook on these streets was much the same. Life was moving too quickly around him and he didn't like it because Sherlock wasn't there with his comforting sarcasm. Life was sharp and relentless without his detective. He hugged Sherlock's coat closer to himself, breathing in the familiar, warming aroma of vanilla, tea and the faintest odour of cigarettes.

John turned up the collar on Sherlock's coat to hide his sunken face from the piercing sun. He needed milk, he'd run out one week and two days ago, and he needed air. The flat had slowly become asphyxiating with all of Sherlock's personal effects in it, the sight of his violin dismantled John like his angry hands crumpled the inadequate notes he would write to his missing detective. John would chide himself with words from the back of his head whenever he looked at it, _**'I'll leave you my heart in my violin and lock the door so I can't get in**_'.

* * *

To John, the shop was stifling. It was far too warm in Sherlock's clinging coat but he wouldn't take it off. Sherlock's coat kept in the bruises and self-administered ligatures. He picked up the milk he needed and paced to the tills. His eyes burned from the clinical lights above every cluttered aisle. A dishevelled man brushed past John as he stood impatiently in the queue, his dark hair was a mess and he smelled of alcohol and grief.

Sherlock hurried around the shop because the lights were too bright and he was far too cold without his coat. The last of the painkillers he had on his person weren't working. His skin pricked up at the temperature change in every aisle. He passed a man while cutting through queues carrying two bottles of milk and a disdainful expression.

John rifled through his empty wallet for his last five-pound note. He breathed in heavily with a derisive sniff to the complaints behind him; 'God, he smells like a corpse, and that coat!', 'look at him, the lost doctor.', 'ugly coat, suited the tall one better', 'he's only buying milk, what's taking him so long?', 'where's his boyfriend?'. He spun on his heel to face the queue of people behind him, sneering like his best friend used to, and calmly exploded.

"Excuse me, but this _coat_ belongs to a _very_ good friend of mine. He is not my boyfriend, and I can see that _he _isn't yours either-is your husband away for long? Now, _**Sherlock**__**Holmes**_ is my lover and partner, I am his blogger and he is my detective. The world's only consulting detective. **He is my best friend**. I love him. So, kindly, _fuck off_ with your judgemental comments and assuming tongues. My lover is none of your business, nor am I." John Watson grabbed at his wallet and stormed out of the shop, leaving the milk behind. He let a small smile play on his lips. It was just like old times. He hadn't noticed that he'd used present tense, categorically stating to that queue of people that he and Sherlock were still together and were still in love.

John had blocked out the cruel reality of the last three weeks and two days for a few minutes. His wrists started to ache properly, as if Sherlock had just cleanly tied them, and John almost truthfully smiled because of it.

He wasn't looking where he was going as he paced down the road and across the street back to 221B. His eyes struck against the sun and didn't hurt as severely as they had on his way to the shops. John was blinded for a second when the sunlight cracked off a car bonnet as he turned the corner, a road away from Baker Street. He didn't see the man in front of him until he had walked straight into him.

John faltered as he hit the man before him, apologising profusely as he skirted his hands over the other man automatically. His light touches fringed a tattered suit and prominent bones, a bone structure that John could recognise even with his eyes blurred. The man drew away quickly. He had learnt every inch of Sherlock Holmes by touch alone, John was not likely to mistake the face he had just touched for anyone but his lover, partner and best friend.

Without thinking, John grabbed out and pulled Sherlock forward into him. His fierce grip made the two become one for a moment. Sherlock melted into John's calloused hands and pressed his worn face into John's hair, breathing in as deeply as he could, soaking in his doctor for the first time in three weeks and two days.

"John?" Sherlock questioned quietly.

"Yes, you bastard, yes." John breathed as pulled Sherlock harder against him and just closed his eyes.


	5. Wounds

"I've made my love and I've made my war, John. And, in the palm of my hand, I crushed it all."

The light was too bright to see and too loud to think.

John's hands shook against Sherlock's skin, sending a tremor through the harsh reality between the two men that likened to something metaphysical in their own piece of London. Sherlock's hair seemed dusty and black at the same time, matted but still a torrent of curls. John's mouth wouldn't move when he tried to speak. His lips were numb all of a sudden, as numb as the rest of his body, as he fell to the floor without a grip on anything.

* * *

The reassuring thump in the back of the doctor's head was as distinct as a heartbeat, but for all he knew, it could have been Sherlock shooting at the wall. His skin was flushed but cold as his eyelids tugged apart.

"Shhe-" John croaked out into the cool space that enveloped him. "Sherl-Sherlock?" His voice was quiet and confused. His eyes still stung and his vision was still impaired.

"Yes, John?" The hard concern in Sherlock's familiar and long-missed tone soothed John's skin and calmed his fleeting heart.

"I can't-I can't see straight. Too bright. Can't see. Please." John stumbled over his words with his heavy tongue, he was troubled by the lack of cohesive vision he was suffering from. "Did I-hit my-head? Sherlock?" There wasn't desperation in his words but John's sated hope of Sherlock's crystal composure fissuring, just slightly, to betray his heart to the man he loved.

"Yes. Doctor. You hit your head on the pavement." Sherlock's words were clipped, the same as they were when he worked. He was only telling John the facts and not the circumstance.

"What?" The dazed tone became evident from the doctor's cotton mouth.

"On the pavement. Outside, when you hugged me. You grabbed me and fell into me. And you slipped from my hands. You hit your head." If you listened quietly, you could hear Sherlock's calm, emotionless murmur falter.

Sherlock's hurt was palatable as time ticked on. His face was fallen against his acute cheekbones, and though John couldn't see well enough to tell, he knew all the same. The detective couldn't pretend that he didn't care, because he did. By leaving John, he had hurt him and by returning-a passing chance in the street-he had wounded him afresh. New wounds and old wounds, but wounds all the same.

**Sherlock Holmes, the maker of wounds.**

* * *

For three weeks and two days, Sherlock and John had rotted inside their minds with all the secrets and lies. On the third day of the third week, Sherlock was considering fleeing again. He was not a man, nor any man for John, he deduced sadly. Life was a leisurely dawning nightmare for Sherlock when he was with John, but as with their infernal, burning love, it was worse without him.

The only consulting detective in the world leant over to his only friend in the world and kissed him on the lips completely. He held nothing back for John in that moment, losing his infinite restraint just once. Sherlock fought with his conscience bitterly as he glanced at his doctor with torn affection before running his long, lithe hands tenderly through John's ocean-floor hair.

"John?" Sherlock whispered in discontent. He was careful not to wake him from his quiet, watched-over slumber in Sherlock's bed.

"Mm?" John's heart-warming tone was thick with sleep.

"How long has it been?" He enquired soulfully as he rested his moonlit head next to John's on his bed.

"Pardon?" John slurred but he was listening as intently as he could.

"Since we last made love?" Sherlock refused to label them as having 'had sex' because he was a man of black-and-white terms swimming in pools of discerning grey. 'Sex' didn't explain what they shared and sex was simply transport for lust and carnal instincts. Sherlock was tactical in his pursuits of love and restrained in his lascivious satisfaction.

"A month, Sherlock." John's tone was sharpening to become less slurred, but the just-woken-up hum lay behind his words still. "Happy Valentine's Day."

"Happy Valentine's Day, John. I've missed you." Sherlock bit his words off before more tumbled out from between his teeth. He pressed his index finger gently to John's lips so he couldn't say it back and sung him to sleep, humming Faure's 'Elegy' for longer than he cared to remember.

* * *

Everything would break in the end, it was meant to. Nothing was built to last where Sherlock Holmes was concerned.

He and John slept together every night for a month and made love most of those nights.

But nothing is supposed to last forever.

_"I've made my love, Sherlock. And I've waged my war. And, in the palm of my hand, I held yours." John spoke softly against Sherlock's skin, the choke caught in his throat like a bread knife. "So, don't go, okay? For me, do this for me... Don't leave." _


	6. In Deep

John woke from violent dreams a lot. With or without anyone else in his life he suffered from nightmares. Some were more violent that others, some were heartbreak played out in his head, and some were just hell itself. John wasn't stupid. He wasn't all that rich, he was well-built; his legs more than his arms, and he had heart. He was more loyal than the earth was to the sun and he had the resolve of the moon. He had been loved by some, not many, be he had not truly known love. John was fairly sociable, didn't take sugar in coffee, and liked jumpers. Jumpers felt like home to John Watson. He was a doctor and, for all his healing, he thrived from his hobby of self-destruction.

In that he was not alone.

Sherlock was lean and tall, skinny to most eyes, but toned under his tight shirts. There was nothing on this earth more self-centred than Sherlock. In love or loathing, he was a man after his own heart. He would always be torn between holding his heart tightly to his chest and ripping it out and spitting on it. Sherlock was alone, always, and the spoils of such an affliction suffocated him. He knew power, had known of love, and once chanced near the dark side of guilt. He was fantastic and grand, and he took the precaution of a good coat. He had the most magnificent mind. He was more constant than clockwork, more punishing than time itself, and always broke like a watch.

And in that he was not alone.

Sherlock and John were forces that were never supposed to meet. They could not hope to collide like their bodies did. They had learned, as a consequence, to create something so inexorably beautiful that the measures and means weren't known even to a genius like Sherlock Holmes.

Together, John Watson and Sherlock Holmes were a burning star. Remarkable, hollow and infinite.

For every argument, for every restraint; every rope, every fight, and every kiss, there was no regret.

No apologies, no promises.

* * *

"What do you think, John?" Sherlock's musing nestled between their bodies on the sofa.

"About what, Sherlock?" John's eyes blinked apart and he stopped breathing against Sherlock's chest for a moment. He lifted his head up slightly, stretching his neck at an awkward angle.

"About what Jim said." The only skeleton in Sherlock's closet had come out to play again and it treated every day like it was Halloween.

"Moriarty." John corrected. Neither he nor Sherlock had spoken of James Moriarty since the night at the pool. He was a plague upon their castle.

"What?" Sherlock enquired. He had learnt by now that he had done something wrong in John's opinion when John was blunt with him. "Something I said?"

"Can we not talk about him, Sherlock, please?" John mumbled as he sat up properly. He analysed his lover's face for any hint of a reaction, but Sherlock simply stared coolly into space.

"Him? John, he has a name. You have nothing to fear from a name."

"Yes, Sherlock, I'm aware. And I do not fear him." _The only things I fear are holding on to you for too long, and the fear of losing __**you **__because of it_. "Let me know when you stop protecting me, love."

Sherlock paused at John's subtle dig, his eyes danced in awe of John's passive-aggressive comment and the strength he caused John to show.

"You called me love." Sherlock's eyes flickered with some small absolution. He was almost dreaming of burning stars and the small smile on John's lips that was, at the second, absent. John remained quiet and didn't move any nearer or further away from Sherlock. "And you know, I will **always** protect you."

"I know, Sherlock. And I will always protect you. Perhaps not from me, but from yourself, definitely." John uttered with the small smile that Sherlock adored. His smile grew more indulgent as John sank against his detective's body again, pressing soft kisses to his shirt as Sherlock played with John's hair.

The detective's nimble fingers skirted past the wound on John's head which caused a familiar twist of sickness to lurch in the back of Sherlock's throat. Sherlock had been back with John, in 221B, for one month and five days. The wound he had caused one month and four days ago was a persistent reminder of why he should leave. The man holding the wound, however, was a constant and adoring reminder as to why he needed to stay.

Sherlock was at war with himself again, as he was every day, and had been for a long time.

* * *

Two days passed in a blur of tea and TV for both the doctor and the detective. They welcomed in one month and one week safely together by going for a meal to Angelo's. Angelo had assumed that they were dating from the start, and John's insistence that he was 'not his date' only succeeded in worsening the implications. It was a cause to celebrate alone because the doctor and the detective were becoming more tolerant of their bonds and were becoming far more creative with their means of restraint. Their love was not so mechanical anymore.

Sherlock wore his purple shirt with his standard black suit attire. John wore a straight suit, no jumper or cardigan, and he looked uncomfortable for such a sacrifice. The tailored suit look complimented John, in Sherlock's opinion, as the fervent, hungry touches at John's wrists displayed. Sherlock even laced their fingers together when they walked down the street. It was too dark to see at eight o'clock in March.

"Allow me." Sherlock winked as he opened the door to Angelo's. He ushered John forwards with his fingertips on the small of John's back. John twisted to adjust Sherlock's slim tie because it was askance against the buttons on his temptingly tight shirt. "Angelo!" The man with dark curls called and Angelo spun on the balls of his feet. A warm grin settled over Angelo's when he saw Sherlock and John together with Sherlock's arm around John's waist.

"Sherlock!" His Italian accent hadn't completely faded in the chaos of London. "And your boyfriend!" His grip on English was a little archaic though. John detested the term 'boyfriend'.

"John, my-" Sherlock interjected with a false smile but reprimanding tone.

"Don't worry." John hushed. He didn't want to cause a scene already. Sherlock pressed his fingers a little harder into John's back before tracing his thumb around to run across John's hip bone.

"Table?" Angelo's welcoming smile was still hanging in front of them.

"If you'd be so kind." Sherlock almost winked at Angelo but caught himself and retrieved what appeared as a nervous twitch with a small, slightly crooked smile.

John and Sherlock both ordered food, 'on the house' obviously, and they ate quietly. They downplayed the meal. It wasn't a grand anniversary date or even a date to John's knowledge, but it was theirs. Both men exchanged glances over clustering candles, to which point Sherlock picked one up, blew it out with pursed lips and put it on a neighbouring table.

"How's the spaghetti, love?" John murmured to Sherlock. He swallowed his food harshly and bit his lip at the realisation he'd called the cold-faced man 'love' again.

"Bland. Love." Sherlock quipped as he pressed his wine glass to his lips. His words seemed struggled but as though the more-than-intelligent detective was playing John at his own game. "He tried though." His words became softer. Sherlock spoke with words that were more of a whisper than a discernible volume above the cacophony of noise surrounding them at their table by the window. John smiled instinctively before absorbing the fact that Sherlock had also called him 'love'.

"Mm, that's good." John mumbled phatically, like a true couple. "I like the tie, by the way, nice touch." John stated as he took his wine glass to his strong, curved mouth. "You can use it on me sometime." He winked and gulped back the wine with a playful smile.

"_Now, now, Doctor_." The smile that pulled at Sherlock's mouth was almost wanting. "I like the suit but you'd look better without it." Sherlock commented with a sly, subtle smile. "You can take it off for me sometime." He uttered, biting his lower lip indistinctly. Sherlock's clever smile was obscured behind his wine glass.

"Are you _flirting_, Sherlock?" John set his glass down and blew another candle out. The noise around them seemed to die down for a brief moment.

"Why? Is it working, John?" Sherlock's gentle yet wicked curve of the lips stayed strong. He stared long and hard into the depths of John's dark brown eyes, losing touch with the real world for a second.

"That would be telling, love. Deduce it." John challenged with a simple grin as he leant marginally closer to Sherlock over the table.

"How _predictable_." Sherlock mused as he swallowed the last of his glass of wine with ease.

"No." John whispered as he leaned his head frighteningly close to Sherlock's. "Kissing me **right** **now** would be predictable."

"Would it?" His almost believable curiousity was captivating to John. "Now, John, as you know I'm not one to be predictable," Sherlock twisted his head at the opposing angle to John's, "but I think I'd make an exception for you." Sherlock spoke against John's lips, letting his child-like stubbornness shine through marvellously. Sherlock closed his eyes lightly and caught John's lips in a kiss softer than a feather. Swallowing the moment in its entirety, Sherlock drew away slowly when he opened his eyes.

"I can tell you that something's working-either my artful tongue or the wine-because your eyes are deeper than the pool right now. It's beautiful." Sherlock was mumbling adoringly, fighting the subtle smile tugging at his lips. John blinked sharply, having completely bypassed Sherlock's compliment for the mention of 'the pool'.

"What did you say?" John swallowed. His gaze wasn't focussed as a result of both the wine and Sherlock's artful tongue, Sherlock was correct in his deduction.

"Beautiful. Deeper than the pool." Sherlock stumbled, studying how the reaction crawled over John's face. "Pool." He whispered to himself as he worked it out, by which time John was already standing. The world's only consulting detective was the smartest man John knew, but he could be extraordinarily stupid on occasion.

John's chair scraped at the floor as the peaceful warmth of his body was yanked away from the off-set detective's figure.

"John!" Sherlock shouted after him as he turned to leave.

"What, Sherlock?" The doctor's tone had become considerably harsher as much as he tried to mitigate it.

"I didn't mean to mention the-"

"Don't bother."

"I didn't think." Sherlock appealed as well as he knew how to. A soft, drowning apology encapsulated his words.

"No, because you never think, Sherlock." John bit. He leant forward and braced his hips against the back of his chair, blowing out the third candle. The darkness that swallowed Sherlock's suddenly gaunt cheeks poisoned the tilted shadows in John's deep eyes. The sandy-haired man snaked his hand around Sherlock's tie. He grabbed a fistful of the thin, layered material and yanked it forward, nearly choking his lover. John pulled Sherlock's head, by his throat, as close as he could without kissing him. "You never **think**." John seethed a little, without meaning to. He breathed against Sherlock's mouth angrily for a small moment and then released his tie. Downing the end of his glass of wine with resentment. "You're paying for this." John muttered back to Sherlock as he walked away with heavy feet. He left his flatmate, best friend and lover, sitting damaged and alone, to fend for himself in the dark and hungry world once more.

The wound on John's scalp stung as he stormed through the door and out into the dark of London in March. John supposed that Sherlock had won, his deduction was completely correct. John's eyes were as deeper than the pool because he'd drowned himself in self-sacrifice that night and had not come up for air since.

For the first time in one month and one week, he breathed and it hurt.

* * *

It always seemed that John was losing.


	7. We are Kings Here

It always seemed to Sherlock that he was losing. He was losing grip, losing his touch, losing the only game he knew how to play.

Sherlock stood faster than his legs would support him. He reached out to the lip of the table for reinforcement because he could only watch John walk away. His lover, best friend and flatmate stormed back down the darkened street they had walked up not two hours ago. John caught the streetlights in a magnificent way. A boiling heat curdled a piercing heat in Sherlock's chest at the way John's sharp suit cut the warm glow of the light in two upon the cold street outside.

Sherlock simply waited for John to come back for a minute before he yelled something indiscernible at Angelo and fled out of the restaurant door with hurried footsteps. Anxious soles barely touched at the pavement as he ran. Fleeting glances sketched out cluttered possibilities in the detective's swimming head.

"John?" Sherlock called as he twisted his head. These streets that seemed glowing from inside Angelo's were far darker when you had lost someone on them. "JOHN!" Desperation piqued at the thickening anxiety in the lone detective's hollow plea.

He knew the direction John had stormed off in, but upon running that way, John was nowhere to be seen. The breaks between streetlights bathed Sherlock's face in shadow. He appeared distraught as he balanced on the balls of his feet in a sheer cloak of darkness, lost on a map he knew so well without his blogger for guidance or direction.

* * *

It was nice to watch everything dissolve, but only when it wasn't yours.

The world was as quiet as vinegar dripping into an open wound and everything that could sting stung mercilessly and without contrition. Sherlock had experienced a lifetime of self-inflicted hurt, but on the other side of the looking glass, everything was so much truer in its intent to harm. The air itself was out to choke him.

Sherlock knew methodically how to disconnect himself. He knew, piece by piece, how to dismantle his universe and castle.

First would come the drinking, then the drugs and then both would kiss deeply as they consumed the other. Next, he would compose songs just to burn them and swear at the ashes for betraying him. Then, he would tie his hands above his head and force his head under the water until it would be 'breathe or die'. And then Sherlock's world would still beneath him, just like John would always do to grant Sherlock permission to kiss him or tighten his binds, because he was at peace.

Even the confines of 221B seemed weightless to Sherlock's wasting thoughts during the ensuing twenty-eight hours. Sherlock didn't sleep. He didn't eat, barely spoke, and barely breathed for twenty –eight hours straight. He was too busy thinking about John. Sherlock deliberated that John was good, too good to underestimate, but not that good.

The constriction of not knowing was relaxing in a way, but the eviscerating sensation of needing the truth stabbed at Sherlock's stomach like a penknife held by a man with a grudge. He **needed** to know why John had left. Why he had disappeared like a magician and fled like a madman. Why John had done to Sherlock as Sherlock had done to him.

Sherlock's need to know blinded him temporarily as he found himself clutching a familiar bottle of sleeping pills for the first time in one month and eight days.

* * *

"_So don't leave me, okay? For me, do this for me…please…" John's voice croaked as if he was about to cry. "Sherlock," His words felt remorseful and lead-weighted. The choke in John's throat was glitter in the blood of this car crash, glamourizing the disaster. "Please. Don't jump." _

"_Oh, John. Intelligent, charming, Doctor Watson. With your aching heart and open wounds," Sherlock's slow smile was too pure to be comforting, like cocaine. "I don't want you to be alone anymore, John." The little light there was caught Sherlock's hand as he reached out to John. All around the doctor and the detective, the air was heavy with a sudden, suffocating regret and bleeding love. "I don't want to be alone." _

"Uh!" Sherlock woke with a start, peeling his cool, sticky skin from his sheets. He knew the function of a cold sweat and all the pieces that connected to instigate one in his body but he had never woken up in one before.

Everything was so sudden of late, everything except John. The world was happening around Sherlock, and without John it was just an exacting noise.

Sherlock's ragged breathing sliced at the thick silence that wrapped around him in his forced sleep. He could have sworn he'd felt breathing on his skin in the night. It was too soft for most to notice, and he could've dreamed it, but Sherlock barely slept and he was never wrong. His flushed skin was exposed to the cold air of his room as sheets that weren't his tangled around the detective's sculpted ankles. The sheets almost bound his feet for a second but they fell loose as he staggered forward and collapsed into the doorway.

The hell of Sherlock's head condensed for a moment. He ambled into the living room to discover that he'd slept in John's bed. Pressing his weary head to his sleeves, he breathed in the treasured aroma of his absent lover.

The black-haired detective didn't know what time it was and he, frankly, didn't care. It was too early and too late all at once, indicating the time to be somewhere in the early hours as he fumbled idly for a pen and some paper.

Liberation and anger entangled themselves into the over-inked scribbles that Sherlock illustrated whilst exchanging mordant glances with the ill-lit mirror. He addressed the letter to himself and simply wrote 'Are you happy?' in the centre of the page. He underlined it heavily with clean lines and initialled it 'SH' before he crumpled it up into a ball in his palm. Sherlock did this seven times before addressing a letter to John, and then another, and another. To John, he wrote: 'You can't chase the devil if he's caught you, John. I am sorry.' 'I didn't mean it.' 'I promised to protect you.' 'I didn't mean to hurt you' 'I'm a liar, John Watson, and you know it.' 'I've waged my war with fire and was all too happy to watch you burn. I was content to hurt you until you needed only me.' 'I want nothing from you.' 'I love you.'

The pile of paper remained written on but untouched. Sherlock's bleary eyes wouldn't permit him to look upon his works and cry, so he looked away with his mouth agape and silently wept into his hands and John's armchair. An hour or two passed without a second glance and nothing had altered. John was still not home. Sherlock had told himself mentally that John had just gone to buy some milk because they were always running out. He didn't even like milk all that much. _He was __**crying**__ over spilt milk._

_What had he become?_ Sherlock wondered what he had made of himself, that he could hurt so much and still feel it? Was he a _creature_ of his own creation now, without John to teach him otherwise?

Sherlock Holmes, the great and masterful detective, arose from John's chair seconds after deliberating his humanity for the hundredth time since John's disappearance. He clawed for the box of matches in his pocket.

He struck one in the relative darkness that 4 o'clock cast upon their flat and he watched it as it burnt for a brief moment. It was like a star about to die as it extinguished itself in Sherlock's tense fingers. It hurt Sherlock's eyes to stare at it and analyse that it burnt the way it did. He debated blinding himself to research how each match would burn differently, but he thought against it as his eyes refocused around the flame and cast across Sherlock's strewn pile of letters.

He looked at them in caustic apology and then burnt them one by one to ease the pain.

* * *

'_This is boring, come and find me.' _Sherlock stared at the screen of his phone with a nonchalance which soon escalated to seething hatred._ 'I thought you'd have found him by now. What a way to treat your pet!'_ His phone buzzed again, lighting up to display a queue of messages all from an unknown number. He already knew who they were from_. 'Play fair, Sherlock, else I'll have him all to myself. And you wouldn't want that, now, would you?'_ The detective's fingers twitched sporadically against the table-top. He shut his eyes carefully, counting down until the next text, timing it perfectly. _'He smells nice, do you wash him?'_ Sherlock read in his head, glancing at the screen as his mouth reacted alone from his uncaring eyes. He bit back a hiss and scowled. The final text came through almost immediately, leaving Sherlock a courteous invitation to disaster. _'Don't be so boring, detective! I want to have some fun and I've only got your bitch-boy. Oh well, how about a game of hide and seek? Hangman maybe? Jim x'_

Sherlock pressed his index and forefinger to his left inner-wrist and counted his pulse to the tick of the haunting clock. He stood slowly, retaining all the poise of a man about to throw himself from a rooftop, snatched his phone from the coffee table and made his way to the door.

Sherlock wore John's tight, striped jumper and his coat. He hailed a cab and loathed every second it took between 221B and the pool.

* * *

"John?" Sherlock's tone was quiet and trepidatious as he tread along the darkened poolside. He was alone for minutes. Glaring into the rippling water, he felt as though his instincts had sabotaged him for the first time in his life. The empty feeling devouring his stomach was new and rough, it was only countered by the mire of disappointment in his stomach that proved he was correct in his judgement. Above him, the lights flickered on with the sound of a housefly dying.

John was strung up from a make-shift diving board; his hands were tied together, above his head as always. Heavy-duty tape and rope restrained him there, as well as a little barbed-wire to add to the fun. The coal black suit that John was wearing was torn and bloodied in patches, streaks of ugly red coloured his sleeve cuffs and collar. Moriarty was making this a risqué meeting of minds, all temptation and no result or reason. He just wanted to play God with Sherlock and John, just with a little more sex.

"Say hello, boys!" Jim's chirpy, disconcerting Irish brogue rang around the pool. You could hear the smile in his strained voice. "Look at your boyfriend, Sherlock, doesn't he look pretty?" John shifted uneasily as he hung, reacting as ever to the term 'boyfriend'. James Moriarty grinned when he stepped into the light. A vicious glint in his eyes pared Sherlock's unmitigated gaze.

"You left an awful mess with your trail of breadcrumbs, John." Sherlock tried to make his tone warm and forgiving, as if to coax John out of the darkness and into the smothering smell of chlorine and bleach. John's body struggled against the digging binds that suspended him. Jim simply stood back and laughed quietly to himself before stepping leisurely towards Sherlock at the other end of the pool.

"Say hello to my little friend, Johnny-boy." Jim greeted calmly. His invitation was carnally uttered to John where he hung. "I know you two love a little rope play, and I just couldn't resist!" Jim walked across to face Sherlock directly. "Does it turn you on to see poor-old John strung up from the ceiling; defenceless and all yours to play with?" Sherlock inhaled sharply and tangled his glare with Moriarty's.

"Well, Sherlock, sweetie; 'all yours' just isn't fair." Moriarty whispered into Sherlock's ear from his left side, ghosting his fingertips across the curly-haired man's palm.

"I'll **kill** you." Sherlock bit acerbically, grabbing for Moriarty's swiftly-moved fingers.

"You'll have to catch me first, _lover boy_." Jim announced against the younger Holmes' cheek, letting his sentiment travel the expanse of the swimming pool. His words gently caressed John's contused, bleeding skin. Jim leaned in and out of the circle he was walking around Sherlock's motionless figure. Sherlock stared intently at his only friend in the world. "You, know, Sherlock, you really are something… _special_." Jim paused to look at John and smiled indulgently at his masterpiece. "I steal your boyfriend away, dear old Johnny over there, and you don't even flinch. How _is_ that?" Moriarty's quizzical lilt was enigmatic to the ear and enticed both men to listen, as hard as Sherlock tried not to. "What kind of **love** do you have there, I wonder?" Sherlock drew his eyes away from John for a succinct moment before they flitted back of their own accord. "And I'm wondering, Sherlock." Jim invited and Sherlock felt compelled to respond and buy John some time out of his binds. John was an army man. He was practiced at loosening holds and evading fire, and Sherlock had taught him lovingly how to lose restraint occasionally.

"Some would call it love_. _Some would fantasize us to be beasts surrounded by our beauty, as such is our love. But you, Jim, you know better. You know what we have, this love of ours, because you gave it to us. You did this. You _created_ this. **And look at us now**!" The world's only consulting detective made sure the world's only consulting criminal was aware of what he had given the good doctor and the conflicted detective. They would be nothing without him and that was the burden he would always have to carry. Sherlock was Moriarty's crime._ "Look how badly you broke it, and see how we've fixed it._ **Together**." Sherlock's words were definite as he teased his eyes away from his lover suspended at the far-side of the pool. He stared hard into Moriarty's soul with glass-like precision.

"Ohh! Oh, really? Really!" James giggled like a child as he pressed his palms to Sherlock's cheeks. "Don't lie to me, Sherlock, I've watched you sleep. It was like watching someone _die_." Jim's tone of voice plummeted all of a sudden. "You think that _you_ have _that_, Sherlock? Look at you! **Look. At. You**!" Jim's tone piqued at ecstatic. "The **both** of you!" He let the consulting detective's face drop from his hands as he turned Sherlock around on the spot. "And don't you **dare** think that you're buying your boyfriend any time, because just you wait until he falls free. I hope you want a pet without any hands. Good luck shagging when he has no hands to tie back. _God forbid he touched you_."

"Don't toy with me, _Jim_. If you want me, you can have me but you could've gotten me whenever you wanted-_why bother with John_?" Brutality worked for Sherlock because insult was his best defence.

Insult added to injuries perfectly defined his love at that exact moment.

"Because, a problem shared is a problem solved and I can think of a hundred ways we can spilt him, honey." Jim grinned widely and without regret. "Do you want to taste the Doctor and the Devil together, Detective?"

"You fucking coward, Jim. You sly, genius, coward." Sherlock spat as he glimpsed at John again. Unease glimmered behind his pool-blue eyes. "**John, don't struggle, don't slip free!**"

"_Give the dog a bone!"_ Moriarty's stressed tone exposed his exasperation. His eyes fell to the floor before he tilted his gaze up through his short lashes. Sherlock attempted to move, having fully assessed every asset and liability of the situation. Moriarty's silencing finger in front of his chest allayed him where he stood.

"Jim, stop it." John groaned where he hung.

"Tell him, Johnny-boy! Go on! Tell the _man of a thousand lies_ what you and I got up to while he was away." Jim's smile was slow now. It tore the shadows as they formed on his skin.

"I've made my love, Sherlock," Underneath the wooden ledge that Moriarty had labelled 'DYING? BORED', John sighed heavily as though the act of breathing itself was a task. "and I've waged my war. And, in the palm of my hand," The noble doctor's thin voice cracked. "I got bored of you. Whore." Sherlock's ears listened like each word was a note he'd never heard before and he was trying messily to deconstruct each one in his head. "I had you, but you were losing your touch, _detective_." John muttered. His heartbeat clogged in his ears and his eyes struggled to open again.

"No." Sherlock uttered without realising. Jim laughed in pleasure, biting his lower lip with fervour. He removed his scolding finger from in front of the great detective.

"Oh no?" Moriarty questioned mockingly.

"**No. John, please don't**…" Sherlock swallowed his words as he paced towards his doctor. "I don't _believe_ him." Quiet befell the nearly abandoned pool. "**I don't believe**-"

"Sherlock, shhh," John hushed from above him. There was something close to adoration in John's blackened eyes as he quickly abandoned the vicious, rehearsed lies. "I can't get free enough to fall, but, _love_," John simply blinked calmly. "**Don't leave me hanging here.**" John lowered his tone to a whisper then, speaking only for Sherlock."I'm a doctor, Sherlock, not an illusionist." A small, beautiful smile flashed across the pain-worn lips. "Although, I'll be disappearing at any rate." He tried to laugh and it broke Sherlock's heart.

"Oh, this _is_ beautiful. Gorgeous, even." Jim sang from far behind the two men. His hands were pressed in prayer before they flew apart. "You _two_!" He laughed heartily. His guttural cackle scraped at the tiled walls that confined the pool. "Perhaps I was wrong about you, Sherlock? You are capable of _**love**_." Jim mused lightly to his two favourite captives. "And I never doubted you, Johnny. Your painful devotion and your soft hands, _he has such soft hands, doesn't he, Sherlock?_" A carnal satisfaction dripped from Jim's words. "If only you knew."

"Enough!" Sherlock reprimanded from the opposing end of the pool. He stretched his lean hand up to John's foot and smoothed his ankle with delicate fingers. "_James Moriarty_, who am I to think that you-the world's only consulting criminal-have stolen my love from me? I am just a man; plain and simple, _boring and predictable_." Sherlock shouted. His voice instilled fear and alleviated John's binds that slightest bit. "Except that I'm not, am I? I am far from boring, nothing close to predictable and am a world away from _normal_." He threatened with power and an equally encompassing sense of calm. "Do I scare you, Jim? **Do I terrify you**? Because I have the knowledge and faith that John didn't touch you without punching you. That soft bruise on your face hid well until you grabbed me. Your wrists too, sleeve cuffs don't hide it all. I could _feel_ the tension and strain you were putting on your wrists to keep my face in your hands. John denied you your desire of _**destroying**_ _me_ and you strung him up for it." Sherlock's lips twitched with a hint of happiness. "You were going to do that anyway, of course. Your skin reeks of chloroform, chlorine and angst. You stink of denial, _I should know_." The detective's subtle touches at John's ankle gained strength to calm his suspended doctor. "**How terrible for you?** How _awful_ that you can't have the only thing that I have, you poor, _snivelling_ dog. You spoiled child." Sherlock almost screamed at Jim. Moriarty's face had fallen to emotionless stone as his hands twitched behind him.

John was almost still under Sherlock's remote touch. He could only look down at Sherlock and across at Jim. He writhed suddenly, with his higher view of the world, as he tried to shake Sherlock off his ankle violently.

"John, I told you, don't _struggle_." Sherlock protested, tightening his slim fingers as he did so.

"No, now isn't the time, Sherlock!" John reasoned, groaning at the increasing sting searing his wrists.

"Calm down, John."

"Sherlock, don't argue with me, please, _**move**_." John commanded with a hiss as the sting in his wrists increased from the gouge the barbed-wire had made. Irrespective of the pain, he still fought his holds.

The clicking of a gun was like a bone breaking. Sherlock's head jerked to face Jim as John wrestled Sherlock from his ankle. The doctor kicked his detective in the face and into the pool, out of the way.

"_Shame_." Jim mumbled as he pressed his finger securely against the trigger, not enough to fire but enough to determine his threat and intent as definite. "I did warn you, boys. You play with fire and you'll get **burned**." Moriarty honestly smiled.

The paralysing silence shattered Sherlock's territorial peace like a solar eclipse does the light, cued by the piercing ring of a shot fired. Then a second and a third, regardless of the detective losing consciousness as he bled into the pool. One shot caught John's wrist, shattering Moriarty's make-shift shackles, heaving half of John's weight unsteadily to the ground. The second shot clipped John on the opposing side to his haemorrhaging wrist and the third ran through ankle, dripping a loose trail of blood where Sherlock's determined and obstinate fingers had just been.

It appeared that, for all of John's fighting, he could never quite fight hard enough. And he never did win.

James Moriarty laughed maniacally as he wandered out of the pool. He tossed the gun into the water as he made his way to the door.

"It's been good, boys, but you're just not my type." His shrill insult echoed through John's broken, panted breathing. The suspended doctor's audible toil was terse in the little noise that swamped the swimming pool.

Sherlock's lead-weighted body dragged itself below the surface of the water, surrendering his need to breathe in favour of his compulsion to bleed. The world's only consulting detective caught John's gaze with his own and whispered up to him.

"I am **truly** sorry."

* * *

Their 28-hour tale wound around Sherlock and John like Jim's makeshift restraints and his lyrical Irish brogue. James Moriarty had won. He had sought out Sherlock's dear doctor and had stolen him from the darkened streets of London without a second glance from fearing and ignorant passers-by. Jim had learned that the key to breaking the world's only consulting detective was to first break the detective's only love. He would steal John away from Sherlock and would watch Sherlock decay for every minute his soul-mate was gone.

The world's only consulting criminal would suck hard at the only vein that touched the surface in John's tense neck. He would bite deeply into the doctor's worn skin until he bled at James' will. Jim would torture John before destroying Sherlock, and Jim would enjoy it.

James Moriarty had planned nothing about his attack to be sexual of the sort that he would share, no emotion would be requited. Jim would bask in the sore, groaning mess he would make of Sherlock's doctor, and John would curses Jim with every ounce of his self-worth and then damn his body for enjoying Jim's hands and mouth as they tore him apart with strategic pleasure.

Jim's attack of passion hadn't gone to plan, however, as Sherlock had deduced with a fervent sense of wanting it not to.

John's blind rage at his blind faith in Sherlock had weakened his reactions and his concentration when he'd stormed down any street that walked him away from Angelo's. Jim crept out of nowhere with a wicked grin and a crowbar, both of which had swiftly met with the back of the distracted doctor's skull.

The acidic sting of the fresh wound still eroded at John's head when he woke up at the pool. Jim's cold hands ran across John's face softer than he had imagined them to. They coaxed the confused and aching doctor back into consciousness.

"Wake up, sleepyhead. We're going to have some _fun_." Moriarty had stirred John awake with all the charm of a fairy-tale devil.

"Don't touch me, you bastard." John protested but his argument had fallen flat as his throat ran dry. He swallowed his last few words as he spoke them.

"I'm not your boyfriend, Johnny boy. I'm so much better!" Jim's accent clung to the t's of 'better' and let them lick at John's clammy skin. He pressed hard fingers against John's lips and dragged his lower lip down with the same lax pressure James had held John in all those months ago when they'd first met. John's wrists throbbed in their rope constraints behind his back. The chair that Jim had propped him up on was uncomfortable and cold.

The doctor could only think of Sherlock as he struggled in his holds, easing his practiced hands out of the abrasive tie that held them together. He and Sherlock had done this so many times, under the weight of each other, that he could do it with his eyes closed. They had sunken beneath the consuming passion that neither fully understood but had both they had learned to love in their own time.

"John, John, John; how little you truly know. How little you know of the man you 'love'. You want him, don't you?" Jim questioned flatly. He distracted John from blankly staring into dark corners of the pool changing room that his eyes couldn't decipher. "But you don't, John, you want a hero. A big strong man to come and save you from this infernal _boredom_. You see, we're not too different, you and me, John. We both want the same animal pretending to be a man. The very **beast** dressed up in drag that we abhor to adore." Moriarty swooped his head in suddenly to John's, pressing his words against John's cheek as he breathed in the faint scent of Sherlock on the doctor's warm skin. "It's _terrible_."

"Fuck you." John bit with a stagnant sense of sickness on his tongue. He leant his head upwards and to the side to meet his mouth with Moriarty's. "You can't touch him. He will **burn you**." The doctor swallowed a shallow breath before he violently pulled Jim's mouth onto his own and bit down heavily into his lower lip; something Sherlock hated. Sherlock's doctor was smarter than either genius gave him credit for. He fought hurriedly out of his binds having taken his captor by surprise. John's deft and practised hands worked at the constricting ropes as he pulled Jim's lip into his mouth and sucked it causing Jim to make a curious moan.

Dropping the rope, John swung his taut hands up to Jim's throat and around to his wrists. He cuffed both of Moriarty's slim wrists with one hand and gripped his throat with the other, yanking their mouths apart.

"He has tau-cgh-" Jim choked when John dug his ardent finger into his neck. Moriarty tried to lick his lips with a malevolent smile but produced another choked groan in John's vehement hold.

"_He_ has taught me well." John spat as he glared at Jim wriggling under his force. Sherlock's only friend in the world felt a warm pit in his stomach as he saw Jim's plan turn on its head before him. John's heart beat for Sherlock for a moment. John stopped thinking for five minutes without realising. He released James' throat and smoothly punched him in the face, bruising his cheekbone. He grabbed at Moriarty's wrists as his fist fell down. John tightened his fingers once, securing his grip, and let them become vice-like in their hold as he could suddenly taste Sherlock on his tongue. He remembered the third time they had kissed, when Sherlock had held John's hands behind his back as he pressed sticky kisses to John's neck and John ran his tongue across Sherlock's sculpted collar bone.

"**Not well enough**." Jim breathed as he broke John's memory. He brought his knee up into John's chest, winding him drastically. Moriarty had regained control of the situation in one fell swoop. He disorientated John with one movement, pulling his arms out of John's buckled grasp. "It's a shame, Johnny. We really had something there." Jim commented as he kicked John square in the head, over-turning the chair and the doctor simultaneously. "I can see what Sherlock sees in you." James appreciated as he bound John's wrists tighter than before in barbed wire, rope and gaffer tape. His words fell onto ears that couldn't hear him.

Moriarty talked for a little while longer as he strung the helpless doctor up from his home-made gallows. "You're a lucky boy, John, having Sherlock Holmes all to yourself. All of that trauma in one man, that anger. Oh, the sex must be _amazing_." The world's only consulting criminal waited a while. He had bided his time long enough already, a few more hours would make no difference. Moriarty sent a messages to the world's only consulting detective.

And just like that, he let his game begin.

* * *

John's anguish fell onto ears that were full of water. John's near-cry ripped at his throat as his body slammed into the cold, unforgiving tiles. The hand that remained in Jim's shackles was shredded as John pulled his weight up just as he threw his body to the floor adjacent to the pool. The doctor's strong fingers dragged through the barbed-wire, rope and tape as he snagged his palm on a barb. John's half-spat scream was terrifying and heart-wrenching to hear. Sherlock felt his heart in his mouth and a twist of sickness in his throat at the sound of John's truly painful cry. His consciousness was fading in and out but he reclaimed control as time pulled him under.

John crawled sluggishly, with bitten breaths and excruciating limbs, to the poolside. John lay down and faced Sherlock as he rested his aching, bloodless head on the tiles.

"Sherlock," John croaked harshly.

"You can't chase the devil if he's caught you, John." Sherlock almost murmured. He pulled his weight to the foot of the pool and stared directly into John's half-lidded eyes.

"Don't be sorry." John just about whispered. His throat throbbed with a horrifying sensation that razor blades were lodged in his larynx.

"I didn't mean for this to happen." The sallow-faced detective admitted quietly, breaking eye contact with his heavily bleeding best friend. "I _promised_ to protect you. I didn't want to hurt you." He muttered loathingly, spilling his insides to the man who was bleeding out onto the poolside in front of him. "I am a liar, John Hamish Watson, and you **know** it."

"Love," John began, breaking Sherlock's red haze.

"Shh, John, let me-please." Sherlock soothed and begged as he dragged his weighty hand out of the water and placed it tenderly over John's un-torn hand. "I've waged my war and Moriarty won. I played with matches and burnt you until you loved me. I restrained you until you needed _only_ me." Sherlock caught and held John's eyes with his own. "I want nothing from you. **I love you**." He held John's hand minutely tighter when he spoke. "I don't want to be alone, John."

"I don't want you to be alone, Sherlock." John declared with a dismantled smile as he heaved his ragged and deeply cut hand and rested it as lightly as he could manage over Sherlock's hand.

And that was how they would always stay. Kings of their broken castle, forever. Time meant nothing, neither did London.

Everything would slowly melt away until all that was left was Sherlock and John and nothing else.

**We are kings here.**


	8. The Cleansing

Their hands held each other's for longer than they cared to feel. Blood painted an intricate and horrid masterpiece on Sherlock's face and around John's body. They were making art with their suffering. John's broken body and Sherlock's newly-breaking heart were the filthy beauty called 'art'.

"There's nothing I could teach you that you would want to know. I have nothing that you want." Sherlock mumbled. He let the cold water lap at his skin and hair. "This is not our love, John, it is someone else's and we are simply borrowing it." John's detective peeled his clothes from his skin to expose his wounds and scars to the water. "We are on borrowed love and borrowed time, John Watson, and I can't even begin to explain myself. That's the hardest part."

"Sherlock, love, everything is as it needs to be." John's breathing dragged at his lips. There was an intermittent wheezing behind his honest words. Sherlock allowed an all-consuming sense of concern to well in his stomach as he breathed in a mouthful of water just to choke it back out. The harsh taste of blood and chlorine only inked bitterness over the current imitation of their peace. "Jim's won, but we haven't lost." John's comforting tone cut at the swallowing silence the pool held them in. "Be quiet with me, would you? Just listen for a second, Sherlock." John asked as he tightened his hold around Sherlock's wrist. He urged Sherlock to pull himself out of the pool, to press his head against John's sore chest.

He was a genius and a madman in equal quantities but, even with all of Sherlock's amassed intellect and knowledge of the world, he was never a doctor. His knowledge couldn't heal John's wounds, only the application of his knowledge could. Lacerations would always be lacerations to Sherlock Holmes.

"I can't help you." Sherlock pled. His searching, analytical eyes were hurting as he closed them. He pressed his ear tightly against John's suited chest and waited. John's soft smile rested on his lips as he let the weight of his lover's head against his stinging chest weigh him down. The weight was comforting and grounding as his eyes flickered shut. Sherlock's devoted head against his chest anchored John to his own personal storm within the calm. Truly, John had only ever wanted a storm to replace his calm and, in Sherlock Holmes; he had found the greatest storm of all.

The next whisper tumbled from being clasped between Sherlock's gritted teeth to settle upon John's cuts and bruises.

"I can't **save** you. I can't do this."

"And I wouldn't ask you to. I don't want you to do anything." John started in a hushed and forgiving tone. "I want nothing from you." The ex-army doctor levelled with the pain in his screaming limbs as he tried to move his torn hand up to Sherlock's hair. His taut breathing caught in the dark-haired detective's ears, between solemn beats of the only heart Sherlock cared about. "_I love you_." John susurrated as his breathing tore his fragile words apart. He attempted to regain the steel composure he'd stolen from his best friend, but his eyes clenched and betrayed him when all that made the good doctor complete fell apart beside him.

The heartbeat that filled Sherlock's head, enough to make it swim, stilled his breathing momentarily. He was struggling to listen to both John's words and John's heartbeat. Sherlock noticed it slow slightly.

The blood trailing down Sherlock's angular face smudged into his lover's chest when he inhaled deeply against John's skin. Breathing deep the scent of chlorine, iron and damp tea, Sherlock pushed his heart-shaped lips solidly against John's chest without regret.

"John, you cannot just give up." Sherlock reasoned, pulling his hands from his sides and draping them over John's limp body. He pulled his whole body out of the pool to tangle around John's for a minute. "You are not supposed to leave me here, in this place, **John**. I know it hurts, but I just…" Sherlock pressed his head as hard as he could against John's chest. He gripped onto John's torn suit shirt with needing fingers.

"Just stop this, please." Sherlock bit silently as he angled his head to try and look directly at John. "You're a doctor, _my_ doctor, and a good one at that; the best I've ever had. The best I'll ever have. So just, stop. **Stop**." Sherlock's nearly choked breathing wrapped around John's throat slowly, caressing him like the tender fingers of a lover about to strangle him.

Sherlock Holmes traced his desperate fingers across John's arm, touching him in the same way the light touches a hummingbird. He found his doctor's hand and laced their fingers together. Sherlock pulled their palms, as one, up to John Watson's faithfully beating heart.

"I know it hurts and I'm sorry, for everything I've ever done to you." The detective almost promised his grief to John in that statement.

Sherlock pressed their foreheads flush and breathed in as though air was a delicacy. Every time Sherlock breathed in, he stole John's air. The downward twist of his crooked smile contorted Sherlock's beautiful features to appear flawed and cheap. Upon breathing out through his barely open mouth, Sherlock's jaw clenched as his lips fell apart noticeably.

The innocent sniffle made it evident to John that the strongest man he knew was on the verge of breaking. The doctor felt his eyes jar open in surprise and a pricking of pain over his flesh when Sherlock pressed his mouth hard to John's.

Everything about that kiss was gentle, despite the physical force. It embodied all the restraint that separated both men in their love but possessed the unspoken acceptance that bound them together. Sherlock opened his lips, greedily breathing against his lover's. He twisted his mouth deftly in reassurance that they were both still here.

The midnight-haired detective wanted deeply to hold John close forever and lie beside him every night with the knowledge that there was just someone who cared about him, and perhaps even loved him.

He wanted to fall asleep each night with the taste of John on his tongue and the smell of John's shampoo on his pillows. Sherlock needed to know that someone would remember him, in their own little way, and that his time on this cruel earth was not wasted and forgotten.

He wanted to be something to someone and he wanted to be someone to John.

Their eyes met amidst the horror that consumed them both. Their sudden silence was simply a catalyst to say more, to say something to one another, to say everything unsaid and pour the rest of their insides out into the darkened pool.

The need to bare their soul to the other grew. It became more overpowering the longer they lay in each other's loose grip. Their hands couldn't hold for long enough to speak for them, their skin could not touch to share their secrets, and they could not kiss like they were without dismantling everything but the stars.

The engulfing reality that sucked Sherlock and John in entirely was made only of the doctor, the detective and lone, burning stars. It was all both men would ever need to survive this cruel, spiteful world that bore them, because they would always have each other and the light to see each other by.

John opened his mouth to speak, without thinking, and uttered a sound that was reminiscent of breaking bones.

"Don't speak, you'll tire yourself." Sherlock begged in a tone as close to soothing as the world's only consulting detective could assimilate. He chewed his lip to hold back any emotion John hadn't already seen. Sherlock considered showing anything that wasn't his mind to John as weakening and betrayal by his body. John considered it otherwise.

"Shh, you. I'm the doctor remember, _brains_." John tried to tease but he croaked when his mouth became dry. "I figure I don't have much left in me, but, you can have it all, Sherlock." John spoke with conviction, even as quiet as he was. He spoke plainly and simply. He bled out as quietly as he could, making this as easy on Sherlock as he was able to.

"John, don't, just, I don't want to be alone! I can't-" The world's only consulting detective choked. "I can't **be** without you. Don't leave me, **please**-" Sherlock sucked back the shallow feeling that rested on his tongue as he bit his lip again. "John. Please." John's soft inhalations were less and less audible each time. "Will you marry me?" Sherlock spoke from desperation and a need to cling to what he had, in any way he could, while he still had it. In his suffering, Sherlock saw beauty, and in John's death he saw the most beautiful life for them both.

It was all too late, as it would always be for Sherlock Holmes.

"Don't be silly," John wheezed this time when his lungs contracted, he almost smiled. "you'd be left with the ring and I don't see you as a marriage type, Sherlock. You're far too you for that." John paused to drag in the sharp air and the warm aroma of Sherlock. He let it envelope him as his detective's arms did. "A guy would have to be mad to even live with you." The doctor coughed weakly hanging a faint, loose smile on his pale lips. "Well, they say the mad ones are the best."

"They are." Sherlock agreed with a small, forced smile, tightening his fingers in Johns. "They are incredible and beautiful and don't take sugar in their coffee." Sherlock's glassy control swamped his face for a second and his features hardened in the dim light. "They, **you,** shouldn't be broken and bleeding by the side of a swimming pool. You should be in a hospital."

"Sherlock," John scolded him limply, "don't even try that on me, we both know I wouldn't make it to a hospital."

This whisper hurt Sherlock all over, inside and out. John created a slow, chemical-burning sensation from the roots of Sherlock's feral curls to the tips of his straining, grabbing fingers as they fought with the doctor's tattered suit to hold onto him for as long as he could.

It was the matter-of-factness that John spoke with that cut Sherlock to the core. He wouldn't make it to the hospital; Sherlock had deduced that for himself but to hear it out loud, from John's mouth, it stung. Sherlock had, for the only time in his not-too-long life, been human for a moment and had hoped. He had foolishly ignored his calculations and statistics for once and he was truly losing his only friend in the world for it. His deductions had provided him no solace, so he had _hoped_ that John would make it to a hospital.

Hope, it seemed, was a dreadful thing.

Sherlock Holmes was at a loss to something he fully understood. Powers greater than his own had tampered with his sense of reasoning, they had raised his hope of belonging with John above the cold, hard facts. Hope had hurt him where he was most exposed. John was bleeding out quietly because Sherlock had hoped. What a mess of a man he was, and he was, at that moment, as he always had been; the sugar in John's coffee.

Sherlock Holmes was the personification of a rainy day, wishing his graceless personal inadequacies upon the world. He could feel torrent of loathing that drowned him. He could feel his hands become tense as he grasped at the thin materials that masked John's skin from his touch.

Anxiety scratched at his skin as his fingers scratched at John's suit. Sherlock enforced his grasp on the ruined cotton of John's shirt as he tried to move him closer. He picked up John's leaden body as gently as he was able to, resting his best friend and lover's heavy head in his lap. Needy touches fringed John's head. He delicately patted at the copious bleeding, coaxing a groan of pain from the doctor.

John would always be John to Sherlock Holmes.

"John," Sherlock choked as his eyes hurt with the pull of tears. "John, I'm sorry." The only consulting detective in the world maintained his iron composure until John spoke, sounding like death himself.

"No, Sherlock. It's not your fault." John was nearly silent with his wavering words. His strength increased an ounce as he continued. The surrounding silence accentuated everything he said as it was comforted by Sherlock's bated breath. "You didn't do this. You're a good man, Sherlock." John tried to smile weakly, but a vague curve of his lips formed before Sherlock's waiting eyes. "I'm sorry I stormed out on you in Angelo's." He apologised fragilely. Guiltily, he dropped their eyes because John knew full well what this was doing to both of them. John knew that Sherlock remembered what he had once told him, one morning over tea, that 'all good men were lonely', _"That's why, you and I, we're not alone. We're not good men. Never will be."_ John could see it dripping behind the veneer of emotionlessness in Sherlock's now readable eyes.

"John Hamish Watson," Sherlock interrupted. He was almost crying. "Don't you dare apologise. No apologies, no promises, remember?" The dark-haired man was beginning to stutter. "Love?"

"You look gorgeous." The doctor's word fell as though they were barely spoken at all. He knew that Sherlock didn't accept compliments at the best of times but John feared that this would haunt him when he was at his worst.

"John, you look beautiful, you always do." Sherlock clenched his eyes together forcefully when he felt John's chest heave beneath his supportive fingers. The tears weren't a surprise when they fell. He just had to let them decorate a sickening pattern of melancholy onto John's pallid skin. "I-I can't-" Sherlock's whole self was faltering as he wept over John's body.

"Shh.." John soothed under him, trying his hardest to stay still to prevent his body betraying the signs of his deterioration any further.

"**JOHN, I CAN'T**!" Sherlock cried to the far side of the morbid pool before he collapsed in on himself, sobbing into John's soft, dark-gold hair. "I can't do-do anything-be anything-without you. I can't breathe without you." Sherlock was whispering broken and jagged sorrow between breaths as his hands became more like claws as they made a home in John's cool skin. John could only listen and breathe softly under the capitation of Sherlock's fraught hands. For the smallest moment, Sherlock almost didn't care that he was causing John pain as he held him, because he was still there to cause pain to. His selfish words hurt John more than his hands ever could. "I want you to stay. I _need_ you with me. I am nothing without you." Sherlock refused to open his eyes to see John weakening in his hands. He denied his eyes watching John slip through his fingers like he had done so many times. "I lov-"

"Sherlock, we've run out of milk." John whispered in a mumble. His words were slurred by his cotton-mouth.

"John?" The detective's voice cracked as he wondered aloud, barely audibly.

"Remind me to get some." John uttered. He was sick and guilty with the knowledge of what he was saying. He couldn't bear to hear Sherlock confess his love anymore because he didn't need to be told that Sherlock loved him, he knew it with every fibre of his being and had known it for a very long time.

Within a second, Sherlock Holmes secured his hold on John's torn and bloodied shirt when he felt the slightest clench of John's muscles.

Everything around the doctor and his detective fell to black as Sherlock eased his head up from John's hair. Sherlock searched John's body for a reaction as he searched John's hollow eyes for an answer to prove him wrong. The fierce and choked cry that caught in Sherlock's constricting throat could have killed him if he let it, and he was so close to letting it.

His doctor and his only friend in the world had slipped from his fingers without even moving. Leaving just one to reclaim his reign as the most despised man in London again.

* * *

They should have been happy really, for their journey was almost over. Their pursuits of self-destruction had led them here, and not before their time. It should have pleased Sherlock to have found a solution to his final problem; _his_ self-destruction.

He had found it in John after all.

* * *

The horror that slowly filled his ears, nose and mouth was only the water of the pool. The suffocating realisation that Sherlock had not told John 'I love you, John Watson, with all of my heart' cocooned him in his own personal Hell as the bile-inducing knowledge hit home that he, now, never could.

Sherlock Holmes had never known love, but he knew that he had come very **very** close with John Watson.

* * *

Sherlock had told himself that, and that he would wait for John because _John had just gone to get milk._


	9. Apples, Milk, Tablets and Tea

"I can't see you if you're not there, but I can still see you. I, '_the man who would be king'_, am doubting because of _you_." Sherlock uttered down the phone, spilling his riled-up guts and doubt into John's voicemail. His argument fell apart towards the end of his breath when he began to regret summoning the strength enough to call John's phone again.

Just because one had stopped why should the other? Simply because they were two parts of the same soul and without the other; one would dismantle themselves slowly, like they were removing their own veins, until they were all together or nothing at all.

* * *

Sherlock sat, stagnant for a moment or two, swallowing back his disbelief like cold vomit. He ran his gentle fingers over John's soft, ice-cherry lips to check if he was still breathing, which he wasn't.

His head pulsed as he tried not to speak, lugging both his body and his lover's to the pool. Sherlock grabbed a tighter hold of John as he dragged him into the cold, illuminated water. He wanted to clean his doctor's wounds. It wasn't safe or correct but it was the best that he could do. Sherlock just wanted to _help_, but John's body was too heavy for Sherlock to hold, and he slid under the surface of the water with John.

The pool engulfed both men with swamping peace and quiet, refracting the glow of the underwater lights to bathe both the doctor and his detective in a light that assimilated the glow of John's laptop and Sherlock's Bunsen burner at once. The water made John look alive. Sherlock began to like the sensation of drowning before his instincts intervened.

The hollow, spitting cough was followed by a deep, frightened inhale as the only consulting detective in the world emerged from the water, clutching at John's sinking body with frantic hands. The most controlled man in London was losing it. His violinist fingers scratched at the already torn suit of his deceased doctor, clawing him back to the surface with him. Suspended in a trance of not wanting to believe any of this, Sherlock towed them both to safety. He had saved his lover's life for once. It was only a shame that he was already dead.

There were no words left to swallow or apologise with as Sherlock Holmes crawled out of the swimming pool, having found no forgiveness or cleansing there. The deadweight of icy water on Sherlock's clothes and hair chilled his skin, as it did John's. John was affected by the cold more so than Sherlock without a flow of blood or pulse to create circulation and regulate temperature. Sherlock was overthinking the mechanics of everything again, John was dead. It didn't matter what led his temperature to not be regulated because he couldn't feel his body growing colder, only his best friend could feel that.

Caught in the peculiar clarity of overthinking and not thinking at all, Sherlock wrapped himself around John and huddled with him for warmth. Sherlock held John as lovingly as he could, to keep him safe from any more harm.

Slow, hushed murmurs were the only sound to be heard in the pool for nearly an hour. Sherlock sat, holding John in front of him with his long legs around John's waist, cradling his lost lover that he would not accept was lost. He wouldn't call the police until he knew for **certain** that John had left him. In truth, Sherlock didn't want to do anything at all except hold John close and tell him how sorry he was that they hadn't solved the case they were working on.

"John?" Sherlock whispered tenderly, as if not wanting to wake him from a sleep. "John, can you see the stars?" Sherlock was polite and curious in his tone but his words were filled with undiluted sadness. Everything went quiet for a while when he got no reply.

Time went on without John and it left Sherlock behind too. Nothing was ever going to be the same from the second John had left Sherlock all alone in the big, bad, cruel world. The detective just sat there for almost two hours. He cradled John like he was made of glass as he stared into the darkness for some sort of redemption.

"John?" Sherlock questioned, softly this time. He stroked John's cheek with his thumb. He was thankful, for now, that he couldn't see John's eyes not even flicker. "John Hamish Watson, if you don't answer me-" Sherlock Holmes choked his sentence short. He hadn't noticed John's skin was marginally cooler than it was a few hours ago. Their hair was damp still but nearly dry, John's was still sodden and stuck to his face and neck. John was barely lukewarm.

His doctor lay limp in his guarding arms. They were not as strong as the doctors were but they were strong enough to keep John safe in the quiet of the swimming pool that started it all. He was strong enough, even, to fumble for the phone in his pocket to absently check if it still worked. It didn't.

The water-laden detective breathed in against John's damp hair, _it still smelled of his_ _shampoo_. He breathed out laboriously when he tipped his head backwards.

"Here you go, honey." A self-appreciating drawl pierced the silent air that was barely being breathed.

Sherlock, suddenly, had no words. Was this a deeper, darker reach of his mind that was kept out of reach while John was there? Was this what he would wake up to every day, if he even woke up?

"James Moriarty." The world's only consulting detective mumbled resignedly. He cursed himself as he did his enemy. "Can it really be?"

"No, don't speak. It's too sweet as it is." Jim's shallow words were airy and light, pleasuring the sickened senses he had honed for torture. "You look so pretty when you're ruined. I didn't think this would be _that_ good, but, Sherlock, honey, you've proved me wrong." Sherlock heard the familiar curling intonation in Jim's voice, indicating that he was smiling. "Now isn't that something?" Moriarty didn't show himself but his voice ricocheted from all corners of the pool. "Tell me, Sherlock, _**can you see the stars**_?" Jim broke out into hysterical, throaty laughter that peaked at a pantomime pitch.

Sherlock dug his fingers resolutely into John's suit and hair. He gritted his teeth as his manic eyes read the room like a book.

"Oh, this really is too beautiful!" Moriarty exclaimed as he breathed out his laughter. "You are _useless_ without him and he's not even cold!" Jim came close to shrieking but reeled back his excitement. "Listen carefully; detective, alone does not protect you. Not from someone like me." Jim languished in his threat as he spoke it. "I just enjoy watching you come to pieces."

Moriarty's words stuck into Sherlock's sensitive flesh like thorns, matching the wilting rose in his arms.

"I'll see you again, Sherlock Holmes, _soon_ _enough_." Footsteps followed the almost lyrical speech. "Let's call it a date!" Succinct clicks of expensive heels against tiles fell slower after each sentence. "Look up, sweetie, look to the **stars**!" Jim paused as Sherlock tilted his head up passively. "Good. I like it when you're alone. Get rid of '_sleeping_ _beauty'_ and I'll talk to you soon." Moriarty dropped a mobile phone from the inverted balcony window above the cuddled bodies, angling the simple drop so the phone landed in John's lap. Sherlock's eyes blurred as the footsteps wandered away. There was a cheery hop in every third step.

Disorientation crept into Sherlock's mind palace, forcing London's most despised man to close his eyes before he threw up, unable to control his body's reaction to the insulting of his dead lover.

The body of his only friend was like lead in his despairing, icy hands. Life was jarring around Sherlock's dazed lack of acceptance to his lover's corpse, everything just stopped and Sherlock refused to stop with it.

**John was still warm**. Sherlock could feel John's body against his like he was still alive, just breathing too lightly to feel, as though he was asleep like a child.

Sherlock breathed in and swallowed the distinctive taste of disgust at what he was about to do. The hand playing with John's hair fell and picked up the phone.

"Lestrade…"

"Sherlock, what's happened? What is it?" DI Lestrade mitigated his panic well, given the time of the call. Sherlock had never called him directly before.

"John, Joh-" Sherlock swallowed his words, stifling a shredded cry of anger and despair and the over-worn sting in his eyes. "John is-" He was whispering. "John is-" Sherlock assured his words with the same heart he had given to John every day. "**dead**." Lestrade fell silent on the other end of the phone. Sherlock could almost hear the police detective's throat dry up. "The pool. _Please_."

* * *

He wasn't even sure that he stood up at first.

The gluttonous feeling of sickness made Sherlock's head heavy as he clutched at John's suit while standing. There were hard hands gripping his biceps, wrists and waist; similar to the hands holding onto John, but the fervent hands supporting the sagging doctor were softer.

"Sherlock, let him go." Lestrade uttered, apologising with every syllable. The detective inspector just stood aside and watched as his team tore John from Sherlock like a plaster from a wound. Sherlock was silent through their separation. He only gripped tighter to John. "Sherlock, please," Lestrade interrupted the terror that tore behind Sherlock's lost yet piercing gaze "don't make this any harder than it already is." Lestrade wasn't emotionless, but, he was practiced at professionalism and now called for it more than ever before.

Sherlock couldn't cry or scream for his loss as he and John were prised apart. He couldn't show anything for his love. He just dug his violin-and-rope worn fingers into his flatmate's torn, bloody suit jacket. John's corpse fell away from Sherlock's touch, leaving the consulting detective only holding his doctor's jacket in his aching hands.

"It's evidence, Sherlock, I'm sorry." Greg pled lightly, looking Sherlock in the eye as he splayed his palms in appeasement.

"Lestrade, don't make me do this. Please " Sherlock croaked. His fingers tightened on the jacket as the hands tightened on his arms, letting his waist go to restrain his arms.

"I'm so sorry." Guilt weighed down Lestrade's already heavy words. Each hit the floor with the same force as John did when he fell. Lestrade didn't want this to be happening as much as Sherlock didn't because he knew, as well as anyone, how much John meant to Sherlock and Sherlock meant to John.

Sherlock didn't nod and barely blinked, but he looked away for solace and found that his lost doctor's unsupported head fall forwards forward with a horrifying ease. He took off his near-pristine but damp suit jacket and put John's on, replacing his onto John's body. Sherlock flicked his eyes to Lestrade who didn't say a thing. Sherlock then rested his soft, adoring gaze upon John, cracking his stone composure in public just this once and only for a second.

DI Lestrade scolded Sherlock with his professional gaze. The defiance to uphold code of conduct was fierce, but he knew in his heart that this meant more that any rule or law could justify. He nodded gently, affirming that Sherlock could keep John's jacket in place of his own.

For John, Sherlock didn't mind breaking the law.

* * *

John's death did not just kill one, it killed two. John Watson was no more than a body on a table in the mortuary of Saint Bartholomew's hospital and Sherlock might as well have been lying there beside him. At least then they would be together.

Sherlock could have told John the obvious deductions of everything he saw and then delved deeper with his own personal, lonely, genius insight and revealed the truth. And John couldn't listen.

The more Sherlock thought about it, the worse it became. Each second spent on John's absence was one that forced him to realise that it was permanent. That was the way life would always be now. John hadn't just left for a few hours to buy milk, he hadn't left to visit Harry for a day or two, he hadn't abandoned Sherlock for three days; he had left forever. Sherlock Holmes had been abandoned for eternity, until he would be welcomed into a shallow grave by Death himself, with open arms.

* * *

The loss of soft, cropped hair that shone gold in the right light cloaked everything Sherlock saw in a thin layer of black. Life would become grey sometimes when the hollow detective checked John's blog again, but not for long. There were no brown eyes to catch the light and the dark in the most beautiful ways anymore, as there was no homely aroma of tea that filled 221B with warmth and character.

It wasn't as though everything stung without John but, to the man who was lonelier than he had ever been in his melancholy life, time itself hurt him. Sunlight just cut at his ignorant vision, water wouldn't clean him of his sins, and rope didn't hold him back from himself. Sherlock Holmes was as he had always been; the world's only consulting detective. Now, he felt more alone in this vicious, vacuous world than ever, because he had known love and lost it, rather than not having known it at all.

Sherlock could only think of John. He couldn't think of anything in particular even when he tried. John would unexpectedly flash into his mind; his smile, an errant laugh, a near kiss, his gentle breathing when he was asleep that would always escalate when his eyes scrunched and his lips fell apart as he remembered his war. Everything after that brief flash of John would then be a little darker than it was before, and still, Sherlock couldn't think.

Lestrade called on Sherlock a few days after John was stolen from him. He barely answered the call, knowing full well what it entailed before Greg had even finished his first, slow sentence. What was Lestrade sorry for? It wasn't his fault; he couldn't have done anything to stop it. It was all Sherlock, and Sherlock reminded himself of that every morning when he woke and each night before he slept.

The dark-haired and fallen-faced detective slept with the help of sleeping pills and water all week.

Sleep was so cold without John, if it was even sleep.

* * *

St Bart's was empty like Sherlock's bed as he stalked down the corridors he knew all too well. Treading a familiar path to the mortuary, he felt a rising choking sensation where he had once felt a sense of wonder and the thrill of the chase.

It was rare that Sherlock noticed her, but, even Molly wasn't smiling. Her face was blank and confused when she saw Sherlock Holmes.

"I-I-I'm-" Molly Hooper stuttered quietly. She tried to turn away from him but then caught sight of Sherlock's flatmate filling the body bag beside her. The detective scowled at her, he was unfeeling to her necessitated emotion and broken expression. He didn't hold the capacity to care anymore, least of all for Molly Hooper.

He had once felt something close to acquaintanceship for Molly, but he was consumed by a creeping hatred that she was breathing and John was not, and Sherlock simply couldn't feel anything but betrayal for life itself now.

John had tried to tell her that he and Sherlock were 'together' but he didn't have the heart, and now in death he didn't have anything.

Molly didn't need to smile to show that she cared or that she empathised with Sherlock; the stoic and statistical madman that he was. She didn't even need to speak, and Sherlock hated her so much because of it. In the exact second that he caught her soft, brown eyes she reminded him of the one man he was without. Molly was so much like Sherlock's absent blogger-doctor. She was gentle and caring, she didn't impose but was strong, and Sherlock couldn't take it.

Sherlock couldn't stomach someone else embodying the qualities of the one person he cared about in all of his space and his time. In the whole of Sherlock's miserable life he had only truly valued the company of one, and that was Doctor John Hamish Watson. He hadn't realised until he'd swung his head away from glaring at Molly, in something close to appreciation, that she was so much like John before. Perhaps it was because he hadn't needed to notice anything else in the world around them when he had John, because John was Sherlock's world.

"Get out!" The iron-hearted consulting detective snapped, seemingly shouting at himself. Black, raucous curls fell in a manic and unkempt arrangement when Sherlock dug one hand fiercely up to the roots of his scalp. He flung his other arm out, dispelling Molly.

"Sor-" She whimpered, caught off-guard from staring meekly at the pained inner turmoil that played out on Sherlock's marble features.

"OUT!" Sherlock bellowed. He flashed his teeth without intent to threaten, he was just on edge. The master of his art was losing his touch, becoming fraught and weak at the only thing he was good at. He was having withdrawal symptoms from life with John. It was the most terrible thing that Molly _watched_ the smartest man she knew dissolve before she fled down the barren corridor with feather-light footsteps.

Minutes fell in the near-silence of heavy breathing that calmed slowly. His heartbeat reduced as long seconds coerced it back into the rhythm of his deep breathing. The detective stumbled up from his perch on a unit and unzipped the only available body bag on the table next to him. Sherlock stared without seeing for a few minutes, unable to tear his eyes away from the tortuous reality that hit him in the chest like a freight train.

He shrugged off his coat automatically and draped it over what he had exposed of John and the body bag that confined him. He walked cautiously around the table to completely view his dead lover. Sherlock crouched beside the table and stared up at John in awe and tragedy. He appeared asleep, at peace, not dead enough for rigor mortis to have set in. John's expression wasn't taut like Sherlock's. He wore it honestly without pain or suffering, he was almost smiling. John wore the same expression in death as he did at Angelo's when Sherlock had kissed him of his own accord. It was an unforgiving but soft smile that gave away more than it kept safe.

Sherlock Holmes, the unmitigated genius, didn't understand how John could look so beautiful and peaceful in death. His despair didn't look anywhere as near as beautiful, nor did he wear it as honestly. Sherlock couldn't understand how John's unapologetic, subtle smile curdled up a warm feeling in the pit of his stomach, at the memory of such a genuine display of emotion.

Even in death, John made Sherlock feel. He anchored Sherlock to life.

"John?" Sherlock questioned as quietly as he could. He was inhibited by the fear of sounding stupid, regardless of the fact that no one could hear him.

As he lay his heavy head down, his breathing became fast and shallow, so as not to disturb John's hair from the way he had left it. Sherlock spent 25 minutes soaking in John's face, hair and body. He breathed him in and savoured the taste. Sherlock didn't say a word because he had no words left for John that hadn't already been said.

* * *

John's funeral was not long after Sherlock was allowed to wish John 'goodbye' in the mortuary. It wasn't loud or announced, it was precious, quiet and all Sherlock's. He allowed Mrs Hudson, Lestrade and Molly to say their tearful goodbyes before he asked them to leave him with John. He refused Harry's presence because Sherlock felt that she had abandoned John in life. Sherlock reasoned that she should have no right to grieve for what she had lost years ago, because Harry had not lost John, she had thrown him away. Sherlock couldn't permit her to wish her brother 'goodbye' because she didn't feel for John like he did. The worst part was that he didn't even feel guilty about it.

Sherlock glowered at the open casket that was keeping his doctor safe instead of his arms. It made John look a horrid shade of pale. Sherlock had had John dressed in one of his suits, with John's striped jumper and Sherlock's suit jacket. He looked cold and pristine, like the product of a hospital procedure. Sherlock didn't want John to be in death something he wasn't in life. John wouldn't have wanted that. He had never told one single lie to Sherlock. He was not a fraud in a suit.

Quietly, Sherlock sniffled and chewed at his lower lip, tugging at his scarf. He lifted John's cold, tense head up gently and rested his scarf at the back of his neck without a word. The solemn detective tied the scarf around John's neck as he would on himself and straightened it out against John's chest. The lack of heartbeat almost startled him for a minute.

"Get your rest, doctor. We've got a case to solve in the morning." Sherlock whispered barely audibly, stifling the tears that were transmuting his voice.

Sherlock leant down slowly and pressed a soft kiss to John's forehead. The cold skin beneath his heart-shaped lips caused a throb of undiluted pain in his chest. Settling his scores with some demons plaguing his head, Sherlock closed his eyes and caught John's lips in his own the slightest bit. John's detective tried desperately to be soft but nearly choked against John's mouth, having not felt it against his own in almost two weeks and knowing that he would never feel it again. He coughed a sob up in his throat as he lifted his head back an inch, letting his well-formed curls caress John's ill-pallor.

Sherlock gripped the lip of the coffin with one hand. He felt his clipped nails dig violently into the cushioned wall of it as he raised his other hand that held a rose like it was made of titanium. The world's only consulting detective rested a red rose on his doctor's abdomen, placing it under his hands so he held it. Through streams of tears he hummed Faure's Elegy.

* * *

The dreams came later than the amiss detective had anticipated they would. It almost made him doubt if they would even come at all. Doubt was all Sherlock lived by without John. He would doubt every thought as he saw it; second-guessing each word before he spoke it, but it was not as though he spoke enough to warrant anyone noticing.

It's not like you could see a ghost deteriorate, but John did as he looked down on his detective every second of every waking day, and Sherlock didn't notice at all.

Day and night all became one to Sherlock Holmes as his world comprised solely of hurt, both self-inflicted and otherwise. Memories and fading pieces of someone he had lost that would remind him less and less of John each day.

Sleeping pills weren't a solution and they became problem after two weeks of grief, pity and guilt. One day in those two weeks, Sherlock couldn't tell which, he had stalled when he walked past John's room. The detective had been weak and gone inside, breathing in everything he could of John's dissipated aroma. He had found a noticeable length of rope under John's pillow, with his army dog-tags nestled inside the curl and loose knot on the rope. Sherlock had held each like he had John's certificate of death. They barely touched his hands before he held them sternly in his fingers and refused to let them go.

The great and fractured detective tried fiercely not to cry as he lay as gently as he could on John's bed, swallowing 8 sleeping pills at once to sleep in that moment and that memory of his only friend in the world.

For the first time in months Sherlock dreamt of John. He dreamt of nothing in particular, just his smile, his soft laugh, that throaty chuckle when Sherlock was so socially rigid that all John could do was laugh. Everything that made John 'John' flooded back in a haze. Sherlock felt himself mumble and attempt to talk but nothing came out. There were no words in his dream, John didn't say a thing. It was merely pictures played out in the detective's sore head until he woke much, much later.

The next day, Sherlock was consumed by anger and the unfairness of life as he washed off the peace his dream of John had stirred up in him. There was no sense or reasoning to his actions, nor any justification that anyone would accept or believe as the impulsive consulting detective tore the flat apart.

221B Baker Street resembled the court of a churchyard after a wedding; what would have been confetti was littered everywhere, but music scripture and John's unopened letters were a sorry excuse for confetti.

Their flat was missing something, Sherlock determined, something aside of the obvious. John was absent but he had taken more that his body and soul with him. There was no scent of tea in the kitchen and lounge, nor the smell his shampoo and body wash in the bathroom, or the stale smell of sex that clung to their sheets and their skin.

Even with Sherlock's presence in it, an uncomfortable emptiness consumed 221B. The flat was reminiscent of the Capulet tomb in Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet', where the star-crossed lovers took their lives. Each corner was stricken with a different example of the strains of rage, grief and love had on Sherlock Holmes.

He walked into the kitchen and raided the barren cupboards for the teabags, condemning any half-strung-together algorithm of sense that decried his plan. Fragments of John's voice wound their way into Sherlock's torrid mind. Fracturing messages from the sublime to the ridiculous, shards of everything from "Love", "You are a brilliant man", "Shhe-" to "Look what you've done.", "You can't accept me.", "I don't see you as the marriage type." The roar of running water drowned out John's hollow memory slightly, but not enough for Sherlock not to turn on both taps in the bath.

The brilliant, fascinating and dangerous man tipped the box of teabags into the scalding bath and sat, cross-legged, beside it. Sherlock closed his eyes gently, easing himself to sleep, forcing his body to shut down for a moment by ceasing to breathe. Upon breathing again, he inhaled the strong smell of tea and found that he fell asleep faster than he had in weeks, and without the aid of tablets.

He was right when he deduced, as he always was, that his dreams would not be a freak occurrence of once and then never again. He just couldn't do that to John. Reality slipped to the back of the detective's hectic mind as he was enveloped by his dream of his lost love. His doctor spoke softly to him as Sherlock saw John lying on his bed, facing Sherlock. They talked as he dreamt; sweet nothings and statistics-the ideal definition of love to Sherlock Holmes. John murmured about a case they had been working on and Sherlock agreed, countered and input where he could, feeling a soft smile form on his lips at John's intellect and charm. The dream flickered a little darker then a little brighter as Sherlock and John held each other, falling asleep in the other's arms. It bestowed Sherlock with a sense of peace until he heard his own voice hum over John's light breathing. "Happy Valentine's day, John. I've missed you." Sherlock bit his words before more tumbled out from between his teeth. He pressed his index finger gently to John's lips so he couldn't say it back and sung him to sleep, humming Faure's 'Elegy' for longer than he cared to remember. Until Sherlock woke up, of course, with his lead yet helium figure slumped against the stone cold bath full of tea.

* * *

Life didn't go on as it should have. John was gone but he was always there in Sherlock's peripheral vision and his dreams, he would even see him out on the street sometimes. Sherlock had followed his twisted guts once and had stood looking through the dusty net-curtains, out onto the street below 221B. He saw his beloved doctor standing on the far side of the road, staring up at the window Sherlock stood silently at. His expression fell as it flooded with guilt and something close to acceptance that John was not actually looking back.

Sherlock decided mournfully that he needed milk as he shut his eyes to John and turned away from the window. He snatched his coat from the hanger and gently placed John's dog-tags around his neck and under his shirt.

* * *

Sherlock dawdled around the shop as if enchanted by the prosthetic lights and the sound of life. In honesty, the consulting detective was repulsed by all those breathing that he judged didn't deserve to breathe in place of his blogger. He would trade every person in that supermarket to have his doctor back in his protecting arms again, even if just for the day.

He ambled up and down the many aisles in pursuit of milk, teabags, an apple and sleeping tablets before paring down any aisle that didn't have any people in. It didn't even take him by surprise that John questioned beside him all of a sudden as he stalked through the pharmaceutical aisle.

"Did we need sugar, Sherlock?" John queried curiously, suggesting that he did need some.

"No, we've got sugar, John." Sherlock replied aloud, even though John wasn't there.

"I'm pretty sure we needed something sweet."

"We did. I got it." The detective clutched a bottle of sleeping tablets in his spiny fingers and tossed them next to a box of tea bags in his basket.

"That's not sweet, Sherlock, and you're well aware that it's not sweet." The figment of Sherlock's delirium that John was fast becoming was arguing with him in public.

"What it gives me is sweet, John." Sherlock protested, voicing his concerns out loud still as he sought out the darkest, emptiest aisle he could to make John's image appear more permanent and not a refraction of the lights.

"Pain isn't _sweet_, Sherlock." John argued and soothed at once, reaching to touch Sherlock's wrist but dropping his arm short of the pale and disorientated detective.

"You never complained." Sherlock bit but not intending to hurt. Petulance hung behind his retort.

"Because I had **you**. _We_ did it _together_, and it _wasn't_ pain." John justified, only to Sherlock. His usually soft and practiced expression hardened in honesty and defence.

"And these give me **you**." Sherlock stated definitely, without fear or excuse.

* * *

Sherlock rested his head on John's pillow on John's armchair and let his eyelids fall down under the weight of the world. He tried hard to remember back to when he was a child and the time he had lost his brother in a playground, but he found that he couldn't remember it. Sherlock couldn't remember anything before meeting John.

His shopping lay at the foot of John's chair, the apple was half-eaten and left to rot beside the half-empty bottle of sleeping pills. Sherlock had calculated the formula to inducing dreams of John; tea, sleeping tablets and something of John's that still held something of his presence potently. The chemist in Sherlock conducted his morbid experiment without an expression or anything to record his findings on. He made a cup of tea without milk and drank it in one with two capfuls of tablets before fetching the pillows from John's bed and propping them on John's armchair in the lounge. Facing the sunset, Sherlock swallowed two mouthfuls of milk and ate one third of the apple. He rested his head on John's pillow and closed his eyes.

The wait was agonising because Sherlock was conscious to the fact that he was trying to sleep for almost ten minutes before the haze yanked at the back of his eyes. He felt himself slip into the already-tread territory of his dreams.

He saw John and himself in Angelo's; he'd seen the sight before. There were words this time but he only saw lips moving and wine being drunk before John stood up and punched Sherlock in the jaw. The bistro was suddenly empty in Sherlock's head as John poured a full glass of vodka and wine over Sherlock and the table and lit the trail of liquor with a candle. Sherlock turned to look at John as he walked away. He couldn't see John's face from either perspective but tears hit the floor as the ex-army doctor stormed away. He could only see himself catch fire. There was a brief cry and a flash of black before the dream contused to the imagery of a crime-scene. The consulting detective did as he wasn't paid to, analysing the area and the evidence as John made idle conversation.

"Did you fall out with Mycroft again?" John asked with a smile in his voice. "Oh no, wait, did you actually communicate with your brother without collapsing a small government base somewhere in middle England?" John was unusually chirpy for a crime-scene; Sherlock didn't have to find his face to tell that. He looked up from the blood splatters that glittered the walls and the light fixtures before averting his eyes to the victim for the first time. Sherlock gagged and faltered as he saw John bleeding on the floor, talking to him as bright as day. John was the victim. "Was it something I said, Sherlock? Because you know I'm joking, right?"

Before Sherlock's mind twisted round a darker corner, there was a heavy thumping sound followed by a cracking and a repeated flicker of white as he walked into John in the street, curdling a memory with his tempestuous mind again. They stared deeply into each other's eyes before kissing longingly with a ferocious passion that was an alteration to the reality again. Sherlock pushed John up against a wall and dug his hands into the doctor's hair while John chased his strong, worn fingers down the buttons of Sherlock's shirt, undoing it and pushing it off in the middle of a street. The doctor took the initiative and loosened the detective's hands from his hair, removing Sherlock's tie and re-tightening it around Sherlock's wrists. John moaned into Sherlock's ear when Sherlock kissed John's neck heatedly.

"You taste so good. I've missed you, honey." The uncharacteristic nature of the speech was put aside by Sherlock's brain as he sucked the pulse in John's neck, more pre-occupied by the gratifying groan it caused. "Uunhh-"

"Doctor, you can get arrested for this sort of behaviour." Sherlock breathed out against John's throat before kissing it sloppily again.

"Let's call it a game, Sherlock-honey!" Whispers caught Sherlock's attention as he drew his head away hastily, casting his eyes upon John in concern. Sherlock's disconcerted gaze fell upon James Moriarty as he was suddenly pushed back into the stinging, cold pool with his wrists tied-up above his head. "You kiss interestingly, Sherlock. I'd love to find out more. **I want to work you out**." Jim's eyes grew darker and curdled against the dim light of the pool in Sherlock's mind. "Oh, come now, _baby_ _boy_! Don't leave him hanging; finish him off and _shoot him in the head_." Sherlock couldn't breathe all of a sudden as the blurring sight of John's almost-lifeless body crept into view, floating above him in the water. Jim winked as he laughed. The harmless giggle cut through the water as he stared at John. "Don't cry, Sherlock, _you'll __**always**__ have me_." Moriarty smiled a full and self-satisfying grin, flashing his teeth like shards of glass. Sherlock's heart beat against his ribs until he couldn't feel it.

The threat of a promise reverberated in the detective's ears and rose in his throat as he snapped out of the horrifying dream and fled to the bathroom.

Sherlock vomited into the sink three times in a row. He hadn't figured into his formula that the induction of self-destruction was unnecessary in that instance because he was well on his way there as it was. The apple, milk and tablets had counter-acted one another and curdled in his stomach, causing his dreams to become more violent and chemically unbalanced before he threw up.

The sick detective's throat burned from bile and acid. Alarm was fresh on his face as he stared into the mirror above the sink. He caught sight of John's reflection behind his own for a millisecond but lost it to the rising lurch of a half-digested apple again.

* * *

The castle he had built on sickness and suffering was weak at the foundations but grew stronger the longer he resided within it. In Sherlock's head, he and John lived together for as long he was awake and fought tortuously on the rare occasion that he slept.

John had been dead for a month and a half and Sherlock was almost the same as the day he had died. For a man with such a brilliant and captivating mind, to have strung himself up with his own ideas should have been expected because it was inevitable eventually. He couldn't devise a way to escape his delirium even if he wanted to.

Sherlock hadn't paid any mind to the dream that had made him sick. He had devoted all of his attention to manufacturing a cure for life without John, that wasn't death. He knew that John would want him to continue being stubborn and refusing to quit, the fighter's instinct.

Every day that Sherlock didn't waste wallowing in self-loathing and hurt was lost to cocktails of sleeping tablets and tea with most of the medicine cabinet thrown in. Life wasn't even life anymore for one of the most fantastic men on earth and certainly, still, the most despised man in London.

The absence of one ex-army doctor, as time passed, only affected one man. One erratic, desperate, loving consulting detective still missed him every day and wouldn't stop missing him until they were at one again. They were a broken watch each day, unable to keep time apart as Sherlock's wasted his and John didn't have any time to keep. They were in need of each other as the other half to solve their problem.

Every few days, the furious detective would pass out due to his experiments in attaining his flatmate from the far reaches of his labyrinth mind. It was only a matter of time before the day came when Sherlock would go too far and put his body in the place that he had once dreamt John's to be.

* * *

The twenty-third of May was welcomed in by most of London with life. Apart from one flat on Baker Street which welcomed it with an overdose watched over by the pained eyes of a deceased doctor.

The detective inside the confines of his lonely, destroyed flat could not hear anything for his pulsating head, nor could he see for his flickering eyes. Lights darted too quickly behind his eyelids and his throat felt like throwing up before running dry. His entire cardiovascular system paused, his lungs seemed to cease from retaining air for more than a minute. All he could do was breathe in quicker and quicker. Shallower, less fulfilling and more desperate struggles and pants were lost to the suddenly airless room.

He clawed and fought at the clothes that felt like they were tightening against his writhing body. His eyes rolled up in their sockets when his eyelids refused to open fully. Mumbled and choked pleas fell to the floor as he tried to call to the ceiling. The sentiment stood even if he didn't. His dilated veins coursed as if flooding with magnesium, each limb felt heavier than it ever had when he'd induced 'sleep' before.

The dark-haired man convulsed as he knew what he was feeling. The weight that acted as a countenance to grief was nothing close to death but the feeling of life itself. Sherlock knew that he felt the life of the one man he loved as his lungs ached and oesophagus stung when he tried to breathe, as if he was submerged under water. He felt like John had felt as he clawed to the very remnants of life as Sherlock had pulled him with himself, under the water of the pool.

Sherlock Holmes was overdosing on more drugs than he could think of at that second. Breathing was no longer simple and his heart was sticking like the hit counter on John's blog. He apologised to John as loudly as he could before life drew the air from between his clenched teeth.

Everything hurt as John could only observe. He was always there but never quite there, and all of a sudden, John Watson wished he couldn't see Sherlock Holmes anymore. He forbade himself his love as he watched him grasp at life. He was asphyxiating yet surrounded by air.

The pursuit of self-destruction had led him down a dark and meandering path, through the pool, the hospital mortuary, the cemetery and their flat. 221B would be the last thing that Sherlock would see, albeit blurred, glaring and distorted. He wanted it so much to have been his doctor. For the first time in his entire life, Sherlock forced himself to stop thinking and breathing and living. He remembered his beloved blogger's face and dreamt of their time together as he was running out of his own. He sought to then think, feel and breathe just one chaste, simple kiss they'd shared as the drugs strained his body and urged him to give up.

Sherlock Holmes would not listen to anything but John's voice in his head for a miniscule moment. He did not give into the urge to cease to exist. His car-crash mind felt like it was haemorrhaging, bleeding with a desperate, dying need to see John just one more time. His nose bled unexpectedly as the little sound there was faded away, along with the blinding light from the corners of his sight. His treasured memories fell apart as he searched for them, leaving him with a tragic and dismantling memory of John as he kissed Sherlock to sleep, but all he saw in his frantic, pounding head bled away too fast.

His slow, staggered whispers of words were laced with fractured sentiment and honest torture as his thrashing body stilled.

"I need a doctor-"

_He would not go down without a fight; it was not in his nature, but if Sherlock Holmes were to die, he would __**never**__ surrender._


End file.
